166Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Ravenous Centipedes
Rats.
They didn't even really look like rats, now that Jamie was able to get a good look at them. Between her gasping screams and her frantic attempts to rise to her feet, she was only able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the rabid little creatures. Each one was a host to several little black tentacles, tangled and matted like long, disgusting mops of diseased hair. Their golden eyes sparkled from deep within, glaring at her. They squeaked and squealed as they plopped from the fat man's gaping stomach, squirming around in blackened plasmatic goo. The darkness they wrought was overwhelming – all of Jamie's fears and insecurities popped up in her mind, paralyzing her.
Where did everyone end up? Let's see… I'm getting eaten by sewer rats, Mia's rotting in the belly of a demon, Stacey's buried under a ton of rubble, Harrison's splattered all over the pavement and Jack… is…
She wasn't sure what to think about Jack… but she had the strangest feeling that doing so might jinx him if he was still alive. Don't murder him, sweetheart. You've come too far to make a mistake like that.
"I always thought things would end differently," she gasped, trying to keep her head clear. "I always thought Jack and I might have kids. Two girls – shit!"
A few slimy rats started to rub against her shins, and she kicked them away ferociously.
"Jack… Jack always wanted girls. Always got along better with girls. We could name them whatever we wanted, and take care of them and love them. They'd be ours, and nobody else's…"
And she trailed off, starting to whimper a bit as the rats got their bearings and headed in her general direction, scuttling around like disoriented ants in an M&M jar… and Jamie's Desert Eagle was still lodged in the fat man's eye socket. He squirmed around gently, dying as the rats ripped out his entrails. Jamie tried not to scream as the gut-rats scuttled closer and closer to her feet; she scrambled away from them, feeling desperately for a loose pipe, a stray shard of metal, a broken piece of brick – anything. But the concrete surface behind her was bare. Be calm, Jamie. Use your brain, your reflexes. You're good to go.
She screamed involuntarily, and the rats responded with a discordant orchestra of mindless squeaks and starved growls.
Jack plopped onto the floor, crunching against the small puddle of glass.
"Goddammit, Harrison. You never said you had a kid."
It was unmistakably Harrison – Jack could never forget that scarred, compassionate cowboy's face, baked and discolored by a childhood spent in the sun. A patchy beard seemed to accentuate his dark eyes, even in the dinky little photograph.
"What happened to them, man?" Jack wondered out loud. He gently touched the photograph and stared at Harrison's wife and daughter, memorizing their faces. After a few moments, he sighed, folded the picture and slid it into his back pocket.
The house suddenly felt safer, for some reason. A haven, an oasis. Perhaps Harrison's spirit was watching over him, but Jack quickly shook that idea away. There were no more guardian angels, not now. He was alone, and he had to get used to that. "Try not to get crazier than you already are," he said to nobody.
He searched Harrison's house again, thinking he might find something else, something personal… but nothing. He was disappointed, but he had to keep moving. For Jamie. You have to find her.
Jack slowly made his way out of the house, stood out in the front lawn for a minute, and then took his leave. He had no idea where he was going, really. The butcher knife felt cold in his pocket.
He caught himself dancing along the street, skipping over mutilated corpses and kicking rocks around. He stopped for a minute to stare at the burning house, and then reluctantly told himself to keep moving. Why can't you focus? How can you be so casual right now?
He put his head down and strode across the desolate road for about thirty seconds before he saw it.
Far in the distance, Jack could barely make out a silhouette against the fiery horizon. She stood in the center of the street, squinting at the sunlight. A battered, bloody schoolgirl's outfit was draped across her lanky form. The woman barely moved, swaying back and forth in the gentle spring breeze. A massive, greasy black tentacle grew where her left arm would be – it greatly outmatched the girl in height and power, and she leaned against it as if she couldn't stand otherwise.
A woman transformed.
Jack immediately ducked out of sight, slipping behind some dying rose bushes. He might have had infected blood in his veins, but he didn't want to take any chances – not after what happened in the convenience store. Under the cover of nearby flora and random debris, he slowly made his way towards the swaying, nightmarish creature.
He approached her carefully, trying not to make any sudden movements. He became a soundless mist, moving along the outskirts of the streets, creeping along abandoned front lawns. The roaring flames from the nearby burning house masked any noise he made.
Thirty seconds of careful sneaking and he was so close that they could communicate by wiggling eyebrows. Jack shuddered at the sight of her.
But it really wasn't the tentacle that fazed Jack – he'd seen much worse in the past two days. He'd murdered people, eaten people, seen people become demons. It wasn't the shards of bone poking out of her joints, or the black ooze dripping from every orifice. It was something else, something oddly familiar about her…
"…Stacey?"
There was no question that the girl was infected; her left arm was a black, slithering nightmare and her flesh was peeling from her bones, but Jack was certain – he was absolutely sure – this zombie girl was Stacey Lynn Callihan, raised from the dead. As Jack snuck closer toward her, he could make out her puffy cheeks, her slightly crooked stance, her arched shoulders and twitchy smile. Stacey's little physical quirks were still there, but her mind and body had been nauseatingly warped by the virus.
And yet she continued to just stand there. Jack, hiding behind a fence now, scanned the area… but there was nothing. The entire neighborhood was utterly deserted, but Stacey stared ahead with such incredulity that Jack couldn't help feeling paranoid. After a few minutes of watching the girl, he finally mustered up the courage to reveal himself.
Random thoughts and emotions flittered through his mind as he came closer and closer to the girl.
He remembered the first time they'd met – it been a lame party with dull pre-teens sipping nasty beer and halfheartedly trying to make use of the condoms in their pockets. Nobody had a personality, nobody had an edge and nobody had any business in the company of alcohol – except, of course, for Stacey Lynn. She was thirteen and tiny, with perky features, way too much makeup and a mop of lava-red hair. Her cheeks beamed pink from the cheap booze in her system, and she screamed bloody murder into a karaoke machine as the other kids stared. My Sharona.
Jack had watched her from the outskirts of the room for two hours, sipping from a bottle of hard lemonade and gnawing the hell out of a toothpick. She was beautiful – in a stupid whore kind of way – and Jack caught himself wondering about her life, where she went to school, who her friends were, what music she liked, what stores she shopped at. He caught himself, and immediately forced his mind into hunter mode. Sex was a precious commodity back then, and Jack was determined to snatch his rightful share. He sucked in one last gasp of air, sipped a bit of lukewarm liquid courage and made his way over to her.
"Stacey?"
Her tentacle seemed to twitch a bit, but she otherwise didn't respond. How the hell did she survive that explosion?
"Stacey, it's me… Jack. Do you remember me?"
She bobbed her head in his general direction, eyes glazed over. Her teenage beauty was nothing more than a memory now.
"Queen," she breathed, barely audible. She hungrily clicked her fangs together, running a sandpapery black tongue across her lips. All the while, her hips swayed side to side in that mesmerizing pattern.
"Stacey, you have to listen to me…"
"Queen," she said again, completely devoid of emotion. Jack wasn't quite sure what to do…
"How goes the hunt, comrade? Jamie slipping out of your grasp yet again?"
Jack swung around to see a pale, scruffy-looking man sneaking up behind him.
He was familiar, but that was all Jack could identify about him. The man was an alien; his demeanor was dripping with sarcasm and wickedness; pale flesh hung loosely from his muscles; bright golden eyes glared underneath a head of dying brown hair. Infected.
But his voice – oh, his voice! – it was something out of a foreign, twisted dream. Jack caught himself wondering where the man was from for a moment… but then shook himself out of it. He couldn't take any chances yet.
"Who are you?" Jack said, his arms crossed and his stance twisted.
"Oh! Vast apologies, Jack," the man said, bowing deeply. "Y'know, it's one of those awkward situations where everyone is acquainted except for one guy – but it's okay, I understand. The important thing is that I know who you are."
"Who are you, and how the hell do you know Jamie?" Jack snarled at him, clenching his fists.
The man raised his hands in surrender. Disgusting-looking bandages adorned his palms. "No need to be alarmed, Jack. I was just taking a stroll with my lady friend here. Does she look familiar to you?"
Jack suddenly understood. "You infected Stacey, you son of a bitch!"
"Cute little Stacey Lynn here? No, I could never do that," the guy said, grinning a clown's grin. "Nobody could do that with a straight face. She's just too damn innocent, don't you think? It's like striking down a harmless puppy. No, no, no – I saved Stacey. She'd be a grease spot if it weren't for me."
"Who the hell are you?" Jack said, his hand on his knife. "No more games. You have five seconds."
The man was quiet for a moment, then ran his fingers through his grimy hair and said, "Ricky."
Ricky. Mia's boyfriend Ricky. He was that skinny guy that Mia always kept a secret, sometimes ditching the group to have murderous sex in a car, or an alleyway or a port-a-potty. He had never gotten a good look at Ricky's face, but he could never forget that name. Ricky. It made his blood scream.
As Jack stood there in a stupor, Ricky started to pace around him. "You didn't answer my question, Jack! How goes the hunt?"
"…fine," Jack muttered after a few moments. "Everything's just fine. Under control…"
"I don't agree. Jamie's rotting somewhere, y'know… oh, but we can talk about her later," said Ricky, smirking and snuggling with Stacey's grotesque tentacle. "How are you, zombie hunter? Still a bit sickly, I trust? How much time do you think you have left?"
Jack shifted his weight a bit, taking the question into consideration. He hadn't actually paid much attention to how quickly he was mutating. How much time did he have? Hours? Less?
"Do you really—"
A roar cut him off mid-sentence. A roar that he never wanted to hear again. A roar that carried for miles and miles; a roar that sounded like aliens drowning; a roar that shook the Earth and raped Jack's ears.
A roar that meant Jamie might still be alive.
"Aha! Right on cue," Ricky said, laughing and dancing about. "Let the party begin!"
"What the hell do you mean?!" Jack screamed, sliding the knife halfway out of his pocket.
The earth shook again, but Ricky continued to dance. Following his lead, Stacey wrapped her tentacle around his chest and they waltzed together, laughing hysterically. "You're screwed, Jack! Stacey Lynn and I are about to see one hell of a show!"
"What?!" Jack said again. Another short, but horrifying earthquake nearly rocked him off his feet.
"Jack, how many times have you fought the centipedes?" Ricky asked, sighing. "Twice? Three times? And they were different, right? Different markings?"
"Twice! And yeah, they were different – but what does that matter?" How the hell does he know all of this?
"Well Jack," Ricky said between giggles, kissing Stacey and twirling her about, "Then they both have your scent, now. Those creatures won't give up on you until you've died a horrible, horrible death; they'll devour you, and then they'll do the same to your precious girlfriend. It'll never end!"
"So I'll fucking kill them!" Jack shrieked, the virus quickly taking over. His eyes were suddenly golden; his blood was ice. The blackened sores on his body seemed to dissipate into thin air, and his skin became thick and veiny. "I'll murder them with my bare hands! I'll kill anything that gets in my way – and that includes you, Ricky!"
But Ricky continued to frolic around with Stacey; they laughed and laughed and laughed, their inhibitions and worries suddenly nonexistent. The duo slithered around on the quaking earth, keeping their balance and their helter-skelter rhythm intact. If not for the circumstances, Jack would have found the dance – and the couple – abstractly beautiful, for they were perfect for each other.
But first things first.
Jack snarled and rushed toward them, the butcher knife held stiffly in front of him like the bow of a ghost ship. He leapt in between them, dodged Stacey's massive tentacle and stabbed Ricky in the gut. Like lava through butter, the blade slid into Ricky's stomach and poked out of the other side; some blood squirted onto the blade handle and dirtied Jack's fingers.
There was no scream. Ricky stopped dancing, and let his final hysterical guffaw trickle away into annoyed chuckles. He glanced at the knife, then at Jack, then at Stacey. She was looking in the other direction, waggling her tentacle and giggling still.
"I have to tell you," Ricky said to Jack, "It's moments like these that annoy me. Out of all the moments someone like you can have, it's always moments such as this… tsk, tsk."
Without a word, Jack slid the knife from Ricky's gut and promptly shoved it into the boy's forehead. Ricky stumbled back about half a foot, then quickly caught his balance and gave Jack a thumbs-up.
"And it's moments like that," he said, his voice significantly croakier, "That make me feel so very proud."
"You look ridiculous," Jack couldn't help saying. Sure enough, Ricky did look a bit silly with a knife sticking out of his head; it was long, awkward and costumey, and broken bits of skull poked out underneath his sickly brown hair.
"It's very… ah, what's the word," said Ricky as he casually yanked the blade from his head; they could all hear a dull screeching noise as it scraped against his skull. "It's very… regal. Don't you think?"
After a good three tugs, he was finally able to wrench it free; the knife left his head with a sickening pop and a gush of oily blood. "That would have been great to have on film, huh?"
Another sudden, terribly powerful earthquake surprised them all, knocking down everyone but Stacey – she balanced herself on her tentacle. And like thunder after lightning, the screeching, nightmarish cry of the centipede polluted the air once more. It was getting closer now.
Ricky returned to his feet in one fluid, ghostly movement. He tossed the bloody knife to Jack, who caught it, licked it, and twirled it between his fingers.
"Let's face it, Jack. You've got a snowball's chance."
"I've made it this far, asshole. You gotta admit that after a certain point, a man becomes immortal. Don't you agree?" He took a few steps forward.
With the swiftness of a spider, Ricky reached into his jacket and revealed a small blade, no larger than a pocket knife. The handle was crafted from ivory, and glinted in the sunlight. Ricky's sarcastic grin melted away, and he slowly took a defensive stance.
"A man? Oh, no. You're just a boy, Jack. And you don't know what you're doing."
"I don't have to—"
Without finishing his own sentence, Jack lunged forward and slashed at Ricky, his butcher's blade whizzing through the air. Ricky hopped backward, easily dodging it and gripping the little ivory knife as if it were an extension of his hand.
"So be it, Jack. Tire yourself out before the inevitable happens and a giant mutant bug tears your guts out. I don't care—"
Ricky stopped himself mid-sentence too; a mach-speed swipe came out of nowhere as the scruffy bastard swung his blade at Jack, catching him off-guard and slitting his cheek. A tiny spurt of blood.
Jack tried to compose himself after the attack—shit!—Ricky swiped at him again, twisting the blade in midair this time. Jack held his arm up at the last moment in a fleeting display of self-defense; flesh fell from his forearm as the white knife entered and exited without discourse or hesitation. And it hurt, for some odd reason – there was a deep and exhausting pain that came with every stab, a pain that Jack hadn't felt in ages. A human pain.
Another deadly swipe from Ricky – he danced and laughed and twirled through the air, poking and prodding at Jack with his tiny ivory knife, cutting him and teasing him like a serpent might tease its prey. Jack held the butcher knife at arm's length, gripping it uselessly as his flesh was slowly torn from his body.
Stacey watched them spar, a gleeful smile on her deformed face.
"Stop! Stop it! That's enough!" Jack finally cried as the little knife slashed into his face once more.
But Ricky was atwitter. "It's never enough, little Johnny Evans! The world is never satisfied with anything you do! You'll go from city to city trying to find some meaning for your life – you'll destroy everything in your path as you look for the ultimate answer! But you'll never find it. Infection is only step one, Jack. Do you know what comes next?"
Jack curled himself up like a salted worm, bleeding and defeated. "Infection," he said, on the verge of tears.
"What comes next, Jack?" stab. stab. stab.
"Infection! Augh… mutation?"
"Correct, Jack! What's step three?"
Jack screamed in torturous agony. "I don't know!"
"Oh, you know! You know! You're a living example of step three, Jack!"
"I don't… pain, torture? Anger? Desperation?"
"Bingo, bingo, bingo! And what is after that, Jack?"
"Death?" Please say death.
"No, you stupid kid! There's something more! Something incredible," said Ricky, squatting down to Jack's eye level. They both panted heavily, their golden eyes twitching frantically in their sockets. "Something that everyone wants but nobody has. It's… it's…"
"Control," they said in unison.
An otherworldly roar seemed to crack the pavement underneath them. The world shook.
"Infection, Mutation, Desperation, Control," said Ricky, completely unfazed by the approaching storm. He rose to his feet, leaving Jack to bleed on the pavement. "Control... and voila! Immortality. Remember that, Jackie Boy. Remember that your actions define you. Oh, you could be so much more, Jack… but right now, you're just another zombie."
"I AM NOT ONE OF THEM!" Jack screamed at him.
"Not yet… but let me tell you a little something," said Ricky, idly poking his bloody stomach. "I saw your little fiasco in the supermarket. I saw what you did – naughty boy – but that's not the point. Here's the long and short of it all, kid. Mia infected you. Not the other way around."
"I realize that now," said Jack. He realized everything now, and the truth had a tepid sting to it.
"Then you must also realize that you and I have the same strain of the virus, eh? That's why you've still got all your brain cells, bucko. You're a cut above the rest. A leader. I mean, are you even remotely aware of how powerful you could be? You and I could rule the world, Jack."
"I'm not doing a goddamned thing until I save Jamie."
Ricky burst out laughing. "Save her? What makes you so sure that Jamie's still alive, my infected brother?"
Jack was hesitant to answer.
"Come now, Jack! I don't have all day!"
"I can still smell her."
Ricky was silent for a moment – was he stunned, or just being pretentious? Jack couldn't tell.
"I know exactly how you feel," said Ricky, his sarcasm fading. "I can still smell my true love too. But she's a rotting corpse by now, and so is Jamie. C'est la vie, Jack. There's nothing you can do."
"Mia's not dead, I assure you," said Jack.
"What makes you so sure?"
Jack smiled. "You really don't know?"
"Humor me, asshole. You're such a psychic wunderkind all of a sudden. Tell me what you think you know."
Jack coughed up a bit of blood, wincing from his fresh stab wounds. But it was good pain, a satisfied pain. He'd finally found something that Ricky didn't know.
"She's alive… because she's Mia the Marauder. She doesn't care about anyone but herself, and she got even worse after the virus took her brain. She'll do anything to make us all suffer, and you know it. If Mia was dead, neither of us would be breathing right now."
A small flicker of judgment – or love or fear, Jack couldn't tell – flashed through Ricky's eyes.
"Fine," he said. "I'll take your word for it, kid." There was a hint of deep terror in his voice, the kind that a little kid might have at the dentist. Real fear.
But it disappeared as soon as it came. Ricky licked the blood from the ivory knife and pocketed it. With a triumphant glance at Stacey, he slid his arm into the crook of her tentacle, and they strode off in the direction of the mall. "With that, I think I'll take my leave. Stacey Lynn and I need some private time," he yelled towards Jack. "You understand!"
"This isn't our last fucking fight, Ricky," Jack groaned as he tried to stand up. "Not by a long shot."
"Sure. If the centipedes don't tear you to pieces, then sure. We'll have ourselves a real brawl," said Ricky with a melancholy grin. He squeezed Stacey's tentacle in one hand and her rotting breast in another. "Come, my protégé. Let us leave the knight to his dragon."
Obediently, Stacey bowed her head and smiled a soulless smile. Before they departed, she turned to look at Jack and opened her mouth ever so briefly.
"Kill her."
The whispered words hit him like a truck, and Jack actually stumbled when he heard them. He blinked, and the two creatures had disappeared.
Suddenly, Jack was alone with his thoughts. With his pain. With the screaming roars of twin demons in the background. Kill her? Kill who? Mia? Jamie? The Mother?
The road began to split beneath him.
Think fast, Jamie.
A gun with no bullets. Bare, weaponless walls. A dozen infected rats nibbling at Jamie's boots. She scanned the area one last time, finding nothing but the stagnant river of slime beneath her. There was no other choice.
Jamie scrambled to her feet, kicked a couple of squealing rats out of her way, snatched her Deagle out of the fat man's pulsing body and dove head-first into the water. It was shallower than she thought, and her head slammed against the bottom; she struggled for what seemed like years underwater, sucking down mouthfuls of toilet water, flailing around, drowning. She finally surfaced after a minute, retching and screaming; her eyes burned, but she did her best to keep them open. Stay alert.
The group of rats stared at her from their perch, motionless all of a sudden. Jamie floated there for a few seconds, letting her feet drag along the bottom of the sewer, getting her bearings back. She felt her head where the concrete hit it; it hurt, but there wasn't much blood.
"I beat you!" Jamie instinctively screamed at the frozen rats. They scowled at her, but didn't move an inch. Something seemed to be keeping them at bay, but she didn't care what. "Ha! Suck on that! Now I just need to find Jack, and everything will be okay…"
She began to make her way through the water when she noticed something bubbling nearby. A little spot of foam on the surface of the brownish-green soup – like something was drowning. And then… a ripple. It was small, but Jamie noticed it. Something… was moving… under… the water. Panicking, Jamie turned and started to splash through the river as fast as she could.
The floor lurched beneath her.
The rats squeaked in fear and scuttled away, into cracks and holes, tiny pathways, or back into the fat man's stomach. Anything for shelter.
Jamie had enough time to scream "I love you Ja—" before an eighty-foot behemoth burst from the very ground beneath her, roaring and writhing in anger, tentacled feelers slamming against the sewer walls. Jamie went flying through the air in a torrent of dirty water, hit her head against the ceiling and plummeted back down to land smack in the middle of the centipede's back. Sneaky son of a bitch.
Its otherworldly cry made Jamie's ears pop and her stomach turn as memories of mangled bodies and twisted cars popped into her head. "No, no, no, no – not again, oh not again!"
The creature lurched forward a bit, ignoring Jamie's sputtering wails. A slender tentacle found her waist and pinned her against the centipede's back, completely helpless. She halfheartedly tried to escape, but she realized that there really wasn't much of a point anymore. She clutched her useless pistol, slammed her eyes shut and tried her hardest to think of happy things. Jack's sloppy kiss. Stacey's high-pitched laugh. Mia's rotting corpse.
She found herself hoping for death as she rode along the centipede's twisting body, trapped and helpless. Something was pissing it off… something was attracting it, but what?
Jack watched intently as his wounds closed up, scabbed over and completely healed themselves. In a matter of minutes, his flesh was back to its pristine, chalky glow.
Another roar, uncomfortably close this time. He snatched the butcher knife from the ground and stared at his bloodstained reflection. A desperate, ugly creature stared back at him.
What can you possibly do to stop any of this? You're just a little maggot, kid. You're worthless. You're doomed.
The David and Goliath fable seemed relevant now. But to be honest, Jack didn't feel like David. He wasn't the underdog. He wasn't the obvious hero. He was a violent, infected mess that perhaps shouldn't be allowed to live in the first place. He only had one purpose now – to protect Jamie. And if that meant murdering the entire world, he'd do it without flinching. Selfish, useless little kid. Always stuck with the short end of the stick.
A massive crack began to grow in the asphalt beneath him, splitting right beneath his feet. He calmly sidestepped it and retreated to Harrison's house, sliding the butcher knife in his pocket as he went.
Jack burst back into the house and ran upstairs to the bloodstained bathroom he'd used earlier. It smelled of rotten flesh and old puke, but he didn't mind – that's how he smelled all the time now. He idly checked the medicine cabinet for something – anything – that he could use to take down the centipedes. No more running, no more hiding. These things were going to die right here, right now.
Jack looked behind the mirror and found a surprisingly deep – and very empty – cabinet. An industrial-sized jar of Tylenol, a small box of band-aids and something that looked like birth-control medication stared back at him. He grabbed the aspirin, broke the lid and munched down a heaping handful of pills, then snatched the band-aids and shoved them in his back pocket. If you ever do find Jamie again.
What to do, oh what to do? He paced the bathroom a few times, cringing as the road outside cracked and bulged. The world shook as the first centipede bellowed beneath the pavement. Jack rushed back into the upstairs hallway and checked the window. Right outside, the earth shifted and the street crumbled as the centipede finally burst out of the sewers.
It was as disgusting as he remembered it. A long, filthy, armor-plated body, split into various segments; too many spindly black legs to count; grease and gore and sewer water stained its hide; an orchestra of tentacles slithered around on its head.
There was a person strapped to its back – poor woman was still alive, still screaming, caught by the beast's malicious tentacles. Jack could see her all the way from the upstairs window; she thrashed around hysterically as if there was no tomorrow. And there wasn't.
Jack forced himself to look away for a moment as the centipede finished dragging its hulking body out of the sewer system.
"It's gonna be up here in less than a minute – it has my scent, it hunted me for fucking miles and it knows exactly where I am."
He breathed deep and took one last look at himself. Mutated. Disgusting. Ready.
With that, he gripped the butcher knife and made his way back downstairs. The centipede was sniffing around outside, pinpointing Jack's location now that it was above ground. "I'm over here," Jack whispered from Harrison's doorway. He didn't bother hiding anymore – he just stood there, waiting.
It spotted him. Its eyes weren't really eyes so much as they were dark, pulsing cysts on its head, but Jack knew that they were focused right on him. The creature took a few cautious steps, growling pensively. The woman on its back kept screaming bloody murder… odd, it sounded slightly familiar, like Jamie's scream. But then again, everything sounded like Jamie to him recently. He shut it out, trying to focus on the massive creature in front of him. It lurched forward, slower than usual.
Another roar thundered in the distance, something lower-pitched and more bellowing than the cry of the creature that stood before him. The second centipede was on its way.
"What the fuck are you waiting for?!" Jack screamed as the first centipede continued to creep up to him. When it was finally within fifty feet of the boy, it reared back on its hind legs like a cobra about to strike. Jack quickly assumed a makeshift fighting stance, waving the knife in front of him… but the cobra didn't strike. The creature used the tentacles on its body to release the screaming woman and toss her into Harrison's front lawn.
And she didn't just sound like Jamie – she was Jamie. Jamie Elizabeth Davis lay there in the middle of the lawn, covered in raw sewage and blood, clutching her broken hand and sobbing. Jack stood there for a moment, stunned. "Jay?"
"Jack? Jack! Oh my God!" Jamie croaked, trying to stand up – she couldn't. Jack tossed the butcher knife aside, rushed over and scooped Jamie up, looking her up and down. She was a total mess; hair matted down, skin filthy and oily, clothes tattered and wet and disgusting. A shiny Desert Eagle gleamed uselessly in her grip.
"Jack…" she whispered, clinging to him and staring up at his disfigured face. She frowned. "What… happened… to you?"
He realized that he must have looked ten times worse than he did when they both made that leap of faith into the sewer system. He looked ten times worse, but he was ten times more powerful. "What do you think happened, sweetheart?"
"I missed you," she said, whimpering, ignoring his deformities. "I missed you, I missed you!"
The centipede hissed at them as it moved in for the kill. It had given Jack his precious bait, and now it hungered for sweet, horrific murder. Thousands of tiny bones in its jaw began to bend and snap as it opened its mouth as wide as it could go; countless teeth covered every inch of it. It hovered above the tiny couple for a moment, and then bit down as hard as it could possibly muster.
Jack was long gone, sprinting down the street as fast as he could. Get Jamie somewhere safe, and then deal with this fucker once and for all.
He ran and ran, vaulting over fences, sprinting in zigzags through backyards – he tore off pieces of his own flesh and smeared his blood against houses as he went, making sure that his scent was in a million places at once. All the while, he carried and coddled Jamie like an injured baby lamb. She didn't have much to say, just incoherent mumbles and the occasional "I missed you." But she was alive, and that was as good a start as Jack could have imagined.
After running in circles for a few minutes, Jack ducked underneath an overturned tow-truck – it had crashed and rolled over pretty recently, as the bloody footprints left behind were still sticky. He laid Jamie down in the cab, running his fingers against her cheek. "Jamie, I'll be right back okay? I promise, I swear to God that I'll be right back," he said. He paused for a while, staring at her. Her eyes were huge, bigger than he'd ever seen them – she was terrified. "But just in case I break that promise… I want you to run to the mall. It can't be more than a mile north, that way. I want you to run to the mall as fast as your legs will take you, okay? Is anything broken? What hurts?
"My hand's broken," she mumbled, tears still streaming down her dirty face. "My hand's been broken."
"And we'll fix that right up when we get to the mall, Jay. Nothing else though, right?"
She shook her head. The screaming, screechy cry of the first centipede was cut off by the deep and bellowing roar of the second. The earth rumbled as the creature crawled out of the sewers in the distance. No time left.
"Okay, that's good," he said, trying to keep his girl calm. "Jamie… Jamie, look at me. I love you more than anything – you know that right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know that. I'm just sorry I can't do anything… I'm sorry that I can't protect you like I always do," she cried, tapping her jammed pistol against the dashboard of the truck. "I'm sorry I'm not there for you anymore."
"It's okay, Jamie. Everything's okay –"
"No! No, it's not okay!" She was crying so hard that her nose began to drip something yellow and thick. "I fucked everything up! If I hadn't stopped at the supermarket, we could have driven straight to the mall and you and Stacey would be fine! And you know the worst part? Mia told me that stopping would be a bad idea. That bitch wanted to go straight to safety, but I didn't listen. I fucked it all up, Jack! I killed everyone! I can't protect anyone!"
"You didn't cause any of this, Jamie. It's not your fault. Times change, okay? I'm protecting you, now." And with that, he tossed her the box of band-aids, kissed her broken hand and ran back to Harrison's house to confront the centipede. And Jamie watched, sniffling like a little girl.
Another earthquake as Jack carefully approached the cul-de-sac. The first centipede was still sniffing around, trying to pinpoint Jack's location and failing at it. His blood was too fresh, and it was splattered everywhere. He found the burning house – it was halfway down now – and hid behind the flames. The heat was terribly oppressive, especially in the middle of the cloudless day, but he endured it and focused on his enemy. He could feel his flesh beginning to sizzle and peel from the heat; it smelled like somebody tossed garbage in a microwave.
He ignored the rank smell of burning flesh and searched around for a bit… there. Its colossal, lumbering form wasn't hard to find at all. The second centipede was right there at the same hole in the ground the first one crawled out of, pulling its massive body out of the depths of the sewer. Large, reddish-black spikes adorned its head like a demonic crown. The smaller first behemoth scuttled around, hissing, nipping the second creature on the neck every now and then. They were like wolves or raptors or something – hunting as a team, but naturally violent towards each other. Jack began to hyperventilate as he tried to think of a plan. You can't take them both on at once… wait… that was it. Raptors. Evil, infected, enormous mutated raptors.
If he could get them to attack each other, then maybe he could take advantage of the situation and take one of them down easily. There was no time to think about it. He suddenly had an idea and he was going to stick with it.
"Hey! Look at me!" He screamed, walking into the middle of the cul-de-sac and waving his arms. "Look over here, you overgrown worms!"
"I hope you know what you're doing," Jamie whispered from her hiding spot.
The centipedes glanced at one another, roared in tandem, and then rushed Jack with everything they had. He was quick, though – he turned off his brain and began to run on pure reflexes, ducking every tentacle, sidestepping the massive centipedes' mouths. The smaller, spotted centipede made a dive just as the spiked one did, and they bashed against each other like sumo wrestlers. Infected brothers, celestial titans clashing in the sky. Every time they missed Jack, enormous hunks of asphalt went flying through the air.
And Jamie watched from the distant sideline, almost unable to comprehend how fast Jack was moving all of a sudden. He was a blur of rotted flesh and claws, and her eyes could barely keep up. She didn't dare say a word from her makeshift hiding place in the tow-truck, but she watched the battle as intently as her mind would allow. Is he just stalling? Is he actually putting up a fight right now, or should I be running away? Even if that was the case – even if Jack was sacrificing himself so that she could get a head start – she could barely find enough strength to walk, let alone run like hell.
Jack was going to fight, and he was going to win. He had to win, for both their lives depended on it.
I'll be right back, Jamie.
He waited until the centipedes accidentally clashed again, and then rushed into Harrison's backyard; there was a little sandbox nearby, and Jack smiled a bit until he noticed the bloodstains on the sand. He smashed through the glass patio door and sprinted into the kitchen, trying to find something to distract the roaring creatures outside. "Does he have a flare gun or something like th—"
Too late – the spiked centipede came crashing down through the roof, bringing a hailstorm of broken debris with it. Smashed bits of furniture, ripped upholstery, broken bits of glass and dust – oh, the dust was absolutely everywhere. Jack went flying back from the impact – it was like Zeus' fist had smashed right through the ceiling of Harrison's beautiful home. He was half-buried in a pile broken wreckage, and horrifying memories of the collapsing supermarket flashed through his mind. When you first lost Jamie… but you'll never lose her again. He forced himself to open his eyes through the suffocating dust cloud and shoved a heavy hunk of ceiling off of his chest; he stumbled from the wreck and made his way back outside as the spiky centipede wiggled around for a bit, trying to dig its head out of the rubble. He stepped away and watched as the rest of the house disintegrated from the pressure of the massive wormlike creature thrashing about inside. In a few seconds, Harrison's house was completely reduced to dust and debris.
The smaller centipede didn't waste any time, lunging towards Jack as soon as he stumbled away from the crumbling building – it clipped him on the arm and nearly ripped his body in half, but he was able to get away with a sickeningly deep gash on his shoulder. It looked horrible, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as Ricky's tiny switchblade stabs did.
He was running out of ideas – what could he do to make the creatures deliberately attack each other?
And then he had it – it was so obvious that he almost kicked himself for not thinking of it first. He flicked off the smaller centipede and started running like hell towards the burning house. He'd lure them inside the billowing black flames and blind them, and then he'd have a decent opening. How he'd actually attack them, he had no idea. He was coming up with one makeshift genius plan after another, and he hoped that his luck wouldn't run out anytime soon. He ran.
The house had seemed much closer than it actually was, and Jack spent an agonizing thirty seconds running for his life as the spiked centipede burrowed its way out of the wreckage and gave chase. Both creatures were hot on his tail, and he dared not turn around to see just how close they were. The screeching, demonic roars were enough to keep him facing forward.
He finally reached the building; malicious flames burst from every window, popping and crackling and growling like rabid attack dogs. Without missing a beat, he ran inside. Hot smoke billowed from all sides as he burst into the living room and looked around. He was inside an oven, and the heat was so intense that he could see shimmering pools of it on the ground. The rubber in his shoes began to stick to the floor, and – augh! – he could smell his rotten flesh starting to cook again. That's what was happening – he was being cooked alive. He ducked down as low as he could, because that's what everyone had always told him to do in a burning building – get on the ground and get to the exit. But the floor was so hot that he couldn't stand touching it, not even with all his newfound infected strength.
"Where the FUCK are you?!" He screamed, hoping the centipedes would crash in at any moment. But they didn't. Maybe they were afraid of the fire.
After an eternity waiting in the burning living room, Jack watched as the walls began to collapse on themselves in an avalanche of black, flaming wreckage. His flesh was becoming seriously crispy, and he did all he could to keep his tattered clothes from catching fire. The burns would have murdered any human being, but Jack wasn't anywhere near human – not anymore. He endured it, but just barely... he could feel himself beginning to wobble. Through the flames and the smoke, he could finally see the centipedes circling outside, waiting for him cook like a couple of impatient kids waiting for a TV dinner. He saw them, and in a short time they saw him too, standing there and burning in agony. They lurched forward, ravenous and screeching. With perfect timing, he fell to the burning floor, unable to take the heat any longer.
What are you gonna do now? Punch them in the jaw? God, you're useless and you're stupid for thinking you could protect her.
You're just a useless little kid.
He was nine years old, and a little douchebag named Kenny Wendell was holding a love letter high above his head. Jack's love letter, meticulously scrawled in red colored pencil and dotted with smiley-face stickers. Veronica Ramos' name covered nearly every inch of it. I love you, Veronica. I thought you should know.
"You're a little faggot, Evans! Hey, everybody! Little Johnny Evans writes looooooove letters!"
Jack – Johnny – sat on a motionless swing set, staring at his dangling Converse sneakers, trying his hardest to hold back tears. Kenny towered over him like a rabid bear, a towering spire of muscle and blubber and anger. His ragged blonde mop hung over his eyes, shrouding them – but Jack knew that underneath all that hair, his eyes were blood red.
"Here's what I think of your mushy gushy letters, faggot," said Kenny, tearing the note into countless pieces and throwing them into Jack's face. Sad green eyes stared up at the behemoth, unsure what to do.
Jack… you're a lover, not a fighter. You always were. Always will be.
"I learned… how to fight…" Jack said, malice dripping from his fangs. In two days, he'd learned how to fight, how to hunt, how to protect, how to control. The virus had taught him everything he needed to know.
He quickly gathered his strength and forced himself to stand; hellfire raged around him on all sides, crackling and sneering. The centipedes snapped at one another for a moment before diving towards him, faster than he could have imagined they could move. Something snapped in Jack's brain, and his reflexes took hold again – he dove out of the centipedes' line of sight and leapt headfirst into a massive pile of smoking debris without thinking. Black, burning ash clogged his lungs, blinded him, scarred him. He could feel the fire tearing away at his body from the inside out.
Jamie watched as Jack disappeared into the dark corners of the burning rubble, and the centipedes ran headlong into each other. It was a train wreck if she'd ever seen one; two absolutely massive, hundred-ton behemoths crashed at high speed, death-trap mouths wide open. The bigger, spiked centipede accidently dug into the smaller one's midsection and bit down hard; the smaller creature yelped as it was torn into two pieces. Gore exploded in all directions; hundreds of mangled human bodies and debris gushed from the creature's stomach in a torrent of dark-red slime. The head screamed as both halves wiggled around, bleeding to death, the greasy red slop pouring from its insides like a fire hose from Hell. After thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of gallons of gore had flooded the streets, the centipede finally began to wither and die.
"Jack… get up. Get up. Getup, getup, getup," Jamie whispered frantically as the bigger centipede finally got its bearings back and looked right at her. She had to be at least two hundred feet away from it all, but the giant creature was looking her straight in the eye. It couldn't smell Jack anymore through the fire, and it sniffed out the closest morsel it could – Jamie. It took a few cautious steps through the river of blood, and then began to charge.
Jack burst from the burning ash in an explosion of fire and guttural, primal yells. He leapt as far as he could, and rolled out into the middle of the cul-de-sac, smoking and charred. His flesh was burnt beyond recognition, and his face looked like something out of a horror story. More so than usual.
The centipede turned to face him again, annoyed.
"I'm going to fucking punch you to death – you hear me?! I'm going to punch you in the gut until you're in two pieces, just like your little buddy there!" Jack roared, smoke pouring past his lips. He rushed the centipede before it had a chance to react, raised his fist and slammed it into the creature's underbelly. He punched once, twice, thrice, and stopped counting after that. Each punch was stronger than the last, and each one made the centipede yelp as it connected. Jack laid into the thing like a pissed-off boxer; he was suddenly four-hundred pounds and he punched as if he were five.
Jack began to find a rhythm in his movements, and he stuck with it. Each blow added to his thunderous tempo, his effortless edge. An unstoppable duo of wrecking balls emerged from his fists, and he roared with the same disgusting viciousness of the centipedes. He would be afraid of himself if he wasn't already so utterly euphoric. He was punching so hard that the air around each punch reverberated and pulsed. Jamie started to scream in the background; her ears were bleeding. The asphalt cracked beneath Jack's feet and the centipede cried in anger. You're just pissing it off, Jack…
But he kept going. Each punch was like a miniature atom bomb, barreling into the centipede's throat with unparalleled passion and power. Jack's fists became weapons of mass destruction, pinpointed on a single spot, destroying more and more with every subsequent blow. He became a feral demon, howling as he dug into the titan's hardened flesh. The scaly exoskeleton began to crack under the pressure of each blow – he was doing it! He dared not stop now – go, go, go. Keep the rhythm.
The skin on his fists melted away, and spiky hunks of exposed bone became makeshift brass knuckles. All the pain and fury that had built up in him over time was being unleashed right now, and the virus molded his frustration into pure power. His biceps tightened so much that they snapped and turned to ribbons; his jaw split apart and gave way to a shark's razorblade flurry of teeth; two or three slathering black tongues poked out of his mouth. His body became a portrait of mutilated meat and twisted bones, unrecognizable to all but Jamie. She watched him, awe-stricken, as her lover became something incredibly vile.
The centipede began to crack, but Jack's newfound power was still not enough. The creature began to flail around, snapping its bladed feelers together, annoyed and relentless.
Look at what you've become, Jack. You're nothing more than a drooling, disfigured puppet.
"NO!" Jack screamed in his own gurgling voice. It was the voice of a frightened teenage kid, not a monster. "Jamie! Where are you? Look at me! It's me! It's Jack! It'll always be me under here, I promise!"
"I trust you!" Jamie whispered. And she really did. Despite what her eyes were telling her, she could still feel a brightness pulsing within him. It was still Jack. That… thing… was still Jack. He wasn't gone, not yet. She just hoped that he wouldn't be leaving her anytime soon.
Something was trying to escape from Jack's chest; he felt it pressing against his ribs, but he suppressed it – keep punching the centipede. Focus. But the feeling wouldn't disappear, even as Jack's body fell apart. Something was inside of him…
His breathing began to slow and his punches became weaker. Twisted, broken muscles tightened back into their original shapes, and bent bones cracked back into position. His raging, infected power started to drain itself out of his body… no… no, the power wasn't leaving him… it was all being sucked down into his chest. Jack stopped punching altogether, and the centipede curled up into a pathetic fetal position, tending to the gaping wound in its belly. But it isn't dead yet. Something was lurching inside of the creature, something boxy and huge and…
As Jack's vision slowly faded away, he watched a green four-door car slide from the gaping hole in the centipede's stomach. It was covered in red-black slime, and it had been crumpled and gnawed like a sheet of paper… but Jack's instinct told him that Mia Smithson was still alive in there, maybe trapped, maybe unconscious, but still alive. The giant had swallowed her whole, and she had survived long enough for Jack to rescue her. You rescued her. You saved her from the belly of the beast, and she's going to repay you with a delicious dose of murder. Shit.
Jamie saw it too. She'd entirely forgotten about Mia, about how she was eaten like a piece of candy. Her heart caught in her throat… but Mia was probably dead, right? There's no way that anyone could have survived being chewed up and digested, even someone as hard to kill as Mia. She dismissed Mia from her mind and focused on Jack again. What was happening to him?
Jack suddenly couldn't focus at all – the pressure in his chest was like a battering ram. He felt as if his heart would explode any second… control it, Jack… but there was no controlling it. The pressure drained every ounce of infected strength from his body and focused it on one central spot. His ribs began to crack under the pressure, and his sternum snapped into pieces. Jack clutched his filthy shirt and fell to his knees, faltering, dying. This was it. The virus had finally made his body useless. Infection, Mutation, Desperation, Control… Slavery.
The tentacle burst from his chest in a torrent of blackened goo and broken bones; it shot out ten feet before it finally stopped growing. Jack collapsed to the ground as every last atom of his strength was transferred into the twisting, angry black nerve in his chest. It was covered in thick veins and powerful-looking muscles, just like all the others.
Jamie screamed his name, clutching her chest. She could feel the life slipping away from him, from her. "Jack! I can't lose you, I can't fucking lose you! Get up!"
But there was no point. The tentacle whipped around like a rebellious fire hose, grabbing nearby objects – bricks, severed limbs, burning tree branches – and tossing them around. It had no direction, no central node, nothing telling it what to do. The Mother's orders fell on deaf ears.
"You must realize that you and I have the same strain of the virus, eh? That's why you've still got all your brain cells, bucko. You're a cut above the rest. A leader."
A different strain. Something that the Mother – wherever the fuck she was – couldn't control. Ricky was wrong; in his infinite wisdom, he had made a fatal mistake. This mutant strain of the virus didn't make them leaders. They were powerful, and they were rebellious, and they had full control over their actions, but they weren't leaders. They were just alone.
The tentacle wasn't a collar that controlled him like the rest of the zombies; it was an extension of his being. It was a tool – a beautiful, glorious birthright. It was a cane, not a crutch.
Rise and shine, Jack. Wake up and smell the bodies burning. Wake up to Jamie's morning breath. Wake up, and do everything you never dreamed you could do.
He rose, a dark specter against the harsh sunlight. His body was entirely numb; all the feeling and emotion and rage that he had ever felt was right there in the twisting tentacle jutting from his chest. The color had been drained from his vision, but the world managed to look sharper and more visceral than it had ever looked before. The tentacle was completely calm now. It helped him balance, helped him breathe, and helped him think. It became him. "You belong to me," he whispered, and the tentacle nodded obediently.
And with that, he began to laugh hysterically.
Snickering lead to giggling, lead to guffaws, to hoots and finally choking laughter – Jack fell to his knees as his body began to burst at the seams. Blood gushed past his lips; veins became grossly varicose and yellow across his face and arms; laughter, laughter, constant laughter! Jack wheezed and cackled, an omnipotent and terrible power surging through his tentacle. Was this the control that Ricky told him about? Or was it just pure hysteria?
The centipede was finally able to flip itself back onto its legs, bleeding profusely from the spot where Jack had punched it, but otherwise okay. It scuttled around for a minute, disoriented, then focused on Jack's giggling form.
It roared again, enraged this time – Jack stood five feet away, watching with half-interest. The vortex of tiny, discolored razorblades seemed to shift and rotate like the teeth of a blender, all moving together in sequence. Reddened vomit, slimy bones—chunks and hunks and bits and pieces of defeated men littered the gaping mouth of the legendary creature. It was a smorgasbord of death; a nightmare-borne cocktail.
And Jack could merely laugh at it.
Power. Ultimate and sickening power. It's all yours, kid. Yours for the taking.
The giggles slowly fizzled to a stop. Jack stood up, calm in the disfigured face of evil. Power dripped from his fingertips in a steady, controlled motion.
Infection.
Blood trickled down Jack's forehead as the veins in his temple began to pop and hiss. A terrible virus had latched onto his body, his mind and his soul. If the apocalypse truly existed, this was it. Everywhere at once, the virus fed upon the sanity of men. It fed upon the destruction of humanity and the chaos of a dying civilization. It fed upon dreams, nightmares, creativity, innovation, love. And Jack was still stumbling along his own dinky path, caught in the middle. Infected with something evil.
Mutation.
Jack stood there in the middle of the destroyed street, a twisted and horrific mass of flesh and bone. His golden eyes glazed over and his teeth clicked together in a rhythmless song. Blackened, horrifically burned flesh covered most of his body. The tentacle wiggled and swayed, glistening in the oppressive sun like a sticky black diamond. He began to hum to himself, partly to calm the twitching tentacle, and partly because he had finally gone batshit insane.
Desperation.
A black tear trickled down his face as uncertainty reared its spiked head. The world would never be the same, and there was nothing he could really do about it. He was only a zombie, after all. A sick kid with no morals, no family, no purpose. Except…
Control.
Jamie. He smiled, and stiffly flung his middle finger into the confused centipede's face.
"Fuck everything you stand for – fuck losing everything. You might take my friends, my family, my car and my home… but you can never take my soul. You will never, ever turn me into some braindead, mumbling little puppet. I dare you to even try."
He took a second to stare at his ugly hand before he dropped it. It was steady. Plagued with broken veins and old blood and rotting flesh, but steady nonetheless.
Power dripped from his fingertips.
Without a moment's hesitation he leapt into the air, latched onto the centipede's forehead and bit down. He opened his mouth as far as it would go and crunched into the creature's concrete flesh. And broke it.
Bits of squirming miniature tentacles spurted from the wound like a flood of black maggots, splattering all over Jack's body, trying to push him off. Jack's own slithering black appendage whipped around frantically, keeping the little ones at bay as he gnawed on the centipede's brain. The creature flailed around for what seemed like years, screaming and bleeding, but it couldn't knock Jack off.
It slowed, roaring gently, losing blood.
Keep eating, Jack. He devoured the little black worms with endless hunger, eating away at the centipede's soul. As it lost more and more energy, it fell onto its belly and dragged itself around aimlessly; Jack clutched onto its forehead like a skilled rodeo cowboy. Hell of a bull.
"I… am not… one of you…" Jack said, finally feeling sick to his stomach after swallowing countless mouthfuls of gore. Something lurched inside of him, and he began to cough up the chewed-up pieces of squiggling brain matter. His tentacle writhed about, shoving itself down into the centipede's forehead, ripping out the bits that Jack missed. The creature groaned one last time before it stopped moving altogether. Its grimy, spiked armor plating shifted once as the life left its hulking body.
"I'm not…" Jack mumbled. "I'm not…"
His tentacle tensed up and began to slide back into his chest; all the strength and power that pulsed inside it was being transferred back into Jack's body. After a few minutes, the tentacle was little more than a pitch-black bump on his breastplate.
"Jack?" Jamie whispered from her hiding spot a hundred feet away. She was crying. Shaking.
Jack gurgled and groaned for a minute, stumbling around, squinting in the sun. He had to make sure of one last thing. He made his way over to the slimy, crumpled green car, stared at it for a minute, and then smashed in the windshield. And of course there was Mia, sitting in the driver's seat, still strapped in. Unconscious and trapped, but still alive. He dragged her out of the car and tossed her into the lake of blood.
She gently sputtered awake, face half-in, half-out of the gore. "My… legs… and my arms… are broken… where… augh… where… Jack?"
He towered over her in the sunlight, a livid silhouette, blackened and scowling. "Go back to sleep, bitch," he said, and punched her in the face as hard as he could. An atom-bomb punch. Her head nearly snapped off her shoulders, and she slid back into a deep unconsciousness.
An hour passed.
Jack sat atop the conquered centipede, dangling his mutated, muscular legs over the side. He'd found his butcher knife, abandoned in Harrison's front lawn underneath a pile of rubble and dust. He didn't need it for self-defense anymore, but he enjoyed playing with the thing. He idly shoved the blade in and out of the creature's exposed brain, making a little rhythm as he went. His burnt flesh had finally healed itself, although he still looked a bit more tan than usual. Mia laid face-down in the puddle of centipede slime.
The sunny horizon was dotted with distant fires and crumbling buildings. Black smoke corrupted the sky for miles. Useless, far-off sirens whispered pensively. Barely-audible screams echoed across the landscape. A distant explosion. People dying. People suffering.
Jamie swaggered across the oil-black lake of gore, loosely clinging to her pistol and making as much noise as possible. Her face and arms were covered in the band-aids that Jack had given her earlier. She hopped over random bodies, broken bits of furniture, bloodstained rubble, slamming her heavy boots down with every step, splashing around like a little boy after the rain. After a good thirty seconds, she finally gained Jack's attention.
He groaned and leapt from his perch. With a slight grimace and a quiet moan, he ignored the throbbing pain in his chest and walked over to Jamie, dragging his feet through the blood. They were absolutely silent as they approached one another, staring intently into each other's eyes. She made the first move and placed her hand in his, felt the icy blood in his veins, and embraced it. The wind picked up slightly, and she slowly ground her hips against him, trying to be as close to him as possible. But not too close – not anymore. She would never feel his beautiful kiss again, not unless she was willing to become a cold-blooded, flesh-eating monster, just like him.
…just like him. …One little kiss couldn't be that hard, right? Look at him. Look at the unlimited power you could have. No! She had to get those horrible thoughts out of her head… because at this point, nothing was worth becoming a zombie. Not even one last kiss with Jack.
He seemed to be reading her thoughts. "It's a bad idea. Trust me, you don't want this," he said, staring across the horizon. He inhaled. "I can still… smell the humanity in you. It's too beautiful to give up.
He was suddenly silent again. Distant.
"…Jack?"
Motionless. Concentrating. Fighting. Something angry and slithering began to uncurl inside of him. He snarled and clicked his teeth together, trying to resist the urge to take a beautiful bite out of her...
But Jamie didn't flinch. Was it love… or denial? He wasn't sure.
His teeth inched closer and closer to her face, and he shuddered as he suppressed his hunger. Jamie could smell the old blood on his breath. He'd been eating people since she last saw him. And yet, she closed her eyes and held him tighter, pressing their bodies together.
I believe in you.
"I'd do anything for you, Jamie… I'd do anything… oh God," said Jack, realizing that his words were as true as they could possibly be. His head bobbed haphazardly on his shoulders as he snarled, bearing his blackened fangs. "I'd do anything to keep you safe… no matter what it means…"
Jack roared and pushed his girlfriend away, gripping his stomach, moaning in pain and starvation. His eyes went dark yellow, and black foam dripped from his mouth. The dark veins on his arms became thick and wormy; the tentacle pulsed in his chest. But as Jamie toppled to the bloody asphalt, Jack's eyes locked onto a different body. A thin, pale, unconscious body.
Without warning, Jack stumbled forward, grabbed Mia's limp form, and took a heaving bite out of her throat.
"Jack! What the hell are you…?" Jamie started, sitting on the ground. But she quickly caught herself. Let him do it.
"The MOTHER!" Jack screamed as he yanked the little muscles from Mia's collar, gnawing on her flesh as she lay there motionless. His voice was shrill and gurgling. "The Mother… no! Control, control, controlcontrolcontrolcontrol THE MOTHER will lead us into utopia! The Mother will devour humanity! The Mother—"
Rotten.
Mia Smithson was a black-blooded, evil, rotten monster, and Jack couldn't swallow her. He didn't notice it at first – the virus had taken over his senses and made him a ravenous eating machine. But that taste… he couldn't do it, oh God, he couldn't keep it down—
As Jamie watched from the sidelines, Jack toppled to the ground, vomiting chunks of Mia all over himself. He writhed around like a salted worm, choking on the tainted meat, trembling with pain. Poisoned.
The shock sent him reeling back into a controlled state of mind. What am I doing?
"Make sure she's fucking dead," Jamie suddenly cried. "Rip her apart! I'm not convinced!"
"Sweetheart," said Jack, coughing. "I dunno if you've noticed, but Mia is disgusting."
"Use your bare hands! Kill the bitch – she's been nothing but trouble since we met her!"
"Well, maybe I don't want to!" Jack screamed, his mouth dripping with vomit and sour blood.
"And maybe I don't care," said Jamie, snarling now. "Eat her, or I'll do it for you."
Jack glared at her for a moment, and then burped up some blackened bits of meat. "I can't do it."
"Fine! She's never been my friend and I'll be glad to be the one to murder her! She's the goddamn dev—come here!" Jamie roared, hopping on Mia's limp body.
"Get off of her! She's infected, Jamie!"
"No!" Jamie screamed, slamming her pistol into Mia's nose, snapping it. The girl's face quickly became a portrait of gushing black gore. "She's Satan incarnate and she's gonna die today, I swear it!"
Jack coughed a few more times, then stumbled over to Jamie and tackled her. "You're just frustrated, babe—"
Jamie struggled a bit, but she was no match for Jack's infected strength. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life. Get off of me!"
"Jamie, look at her! She's done for!"
"Get off of me!"
"Not until you look at the girl, for fuck's sake!"
Reluctantly, Jamie glanced at her. Broken nose. Open, rotting sores. Swollen, pus-filled, putrefied flesh, all caked with blackened blood, new and old. Paper-white skin had been crumpled and torn and stained a filthy brownish-green color. Bite marks and deep cuts and sickening burns. Hair matted down with just about everything putrid.
"She deserves worse," said Jamie. She tried not to blink. Failed at it.
Jack could feel her heartbeat slow down. "Promise me you'll calm down," he said. "Promise me."
She thought for a minute, and then stared at Mia again. "Alright," she growled. Her voice was laced with poison.
Jack let go of her, and they stumbled apart. "I'll deal with Mia, alright? God!"
"Deal with her? What, are you gonna fuck her again? You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Jamie screamed at him.
"Oh, here we go again…"
"Yeah! Yeah, here we go again! We're gonna go again and again until one of us is dead because you fucking messed up! I might have made mistakes but you messed up everything on purpose! You had sex with Mia and you let Stacey die!"
Jack stared at her incredulously. You save her life because you love her, and she still can't forget your mistakes. "Every mistake I've made since the outbreak was your fault, Jamie! I was trying to save you every time something bad happened! I jumped in the sewer because I was protecting you from the zombies and I let Harrison die because I was protecting you from zombies. I left Stacey with Mia because I went looking for you, remember? It's Mia's fault, not mine!"
"Oh yeah? Why did you have sex with her? Because you were protecting me? Huh?!"
Jack bared his black teeth for a moment before groaning and putting his head down. "I did that for me, okay? I was scared. I was scared out of my mind because—"
"We were all afraid of dying, Jack – but I didn't cheat on you because of it!"
"I wasn't scared of dying. I was scared of losing you," he said, his voice quiet and desperate. "I was scared because I didn't know where you were, if you were alive or dead. I needed comfort, solace, something. And Mia was just there. I hated her too, but I she was just there. I didn't know what to do."
"Save it. Why the hell did you even rescue her from the centipede's stomach? Why didn't you let her rot if you hate her so much?"
"It wasn't my fault – I was saving you! Why can't you get that through your thick skull, Jamie?"
"You were saving me. Sure. Let's leave it at that and ignore all the other mountains of bullshit. Let's just leave it at that."
Jamie panted in anger a bit, and then started to walk away. She couldn't even look at him right now.
For once, Jamie wasn't quite sure what to do. Her options were laid out in front of her, as plain as day – kill Mia, forgive Jack, go to the mall, get rescued. Forget any of this shit ever happened. Move on.
But she didn't know how to do any of those things, and she furrowed her brow at the thought of it. She was fine with being unable to control others. Mia, Stacey, the zombies, and even Jack lately – they were all beyond her control, and there was nothing she could do to stop them from fucking something up. But for the first time ever, Jamie couldn't decide what she was going to do. Everything she wanted to do had a serious consequence, a strong sense of unpredictability or an obvious barrier wrapped around it. She had to make a choice, but… oh, what could she possibly do? A wave of helplessness crashed into her, and she nearly toppled over.
"Jack?" Jamie called out. She had to know something.
"What the hell do you want?"
"What is it like to eat a person? Does it feel good? Is it satisfying?"
Jack thought about it for minute, carefully fiddling with his sticky hair. A clump of it came loose as he pulled his fingers away. Sighing, he turned to Jamie. His voice was still strained, trying not to yell at her. "Remember at Mia's birthday party when Stacey dared you to chug that fifth of Jager?"
"I can't remember how many gallons I puked after that," said Jamie, smiling a bit. She quickly frowned again, glaring at him.
"Yeah, well that's exactly how it feels to eat someone."
"So… it feels like throwing up?"
He kept his attention on his hands, not looking at Jamie's face as he spoke. "It feels like throwing up backwards. You know that helpless feeling you get when you just can't hold your puke anymore? Like that. But that's not the only thing I feel whenever I eat someone – the virus takes over my mind, and makes it feel like the greatest thing in the world. Whenever I go full-blown zombie, eating another human being is as wonderful as falling in love," he said, finally looking at her when 'love' passed his lips. "It's weird."
He rubbed his chest, poking the pulsing tentacle within him, playing with it like someone might play with a hangnail. "But subconsciously, the human side of me is always screaming in disgusted agony. It's a really complicated feeling to explain."
Jamie was silent for a minute. "What about Mia?"
"She's terrible either way," Jack said, shuddering noticeably. That rotten taste was still lingering on his taste buds.
"I keep telling you she's no good. She's a bad person, a bad friend, and a bad influence. Hell, even as a flesh-eating zombie, she's still the same fucked-up girl. Face it, Mia is—"
"Mia needs to die right now," said Jack, finishing her sentence. Jamie's face lit up – finally he understood!
"So can I… can I end it all? Can I kill her for real? Please?"
After a long and torturous silence, Jack finally muttered "You can try."
Elated, Jamie clapped her hands together, snatched the knife from Jack and ran over to Mia's unconscious body. She raised the blade above her head, ready to kill.
"Before you do it, let me just say," said Jack, smiling mysteriously, "That Mia the Marauder is never going to die. You could chop off her head and burn it to ashes, but I swear to God that her body will keep on ticking. You could blow her brains out, chop her into pieces and feed her to the rats, but she will find a way to survive, and she will get her revenge."
"Bullshit."
"She's cheated death a million times in two days, she's been infected for months, and she's the most psychopathic person you've ever met. She's powerful beyond words. We haven't seen anything yet. She will never let herself be defeated by Jamie Davis and her fucking pea-shooters. Never. You can try, but she's going to come after you one way or another. She's going to make you suffer."
Over the course of his little speech, Jack's eyes had noticeably gone from pallid yellow to shimmering gold. He now stared at Jamie, his mouth open, his eyes glinting and his stomach grumbling… but he didn't move an inch. He merely stared at her.
"She will annihilate you," Jack whispered, his voice suddenly deeper and raspier. It was not his own. "She will come after you with a hole in her heart, and she will not stop until that hole has been mended. You cannot stop her alone."
Jamie finally dropped the knife; uncontrollable tears were falling down her cheeks. When she spoke, her words were hardened and steady. "Who can possibly help me now, zombie boy? Everyone I know has been killed or infected. There's nobody left. No hope."
He smiled again – oh God, that razorblade smile! – and slowly walked toward her. The tears flowed heavily down her face, but she kept herself composed and emotionless. In a few awkward, strained motions, he knelt down to her level and leaned in toward her. His teeth were cold as they soothingly caressed her throat. She immediately felt better, shivering as his bloodied breath reached her nostrils. His next sentence was drenched in slime.
"There are some things stronger than infection, my love."
He kissed her.
No… no, their lips hadn't even touched. He was hovering against her mouth, and was so dangerously close that Jamie could feel the vibrations from his greasy, irregular heartbeat – but their lips weren't touching. They were doing something much, much more difficult and powerful, something that Jamie couldn't comprehend. And they did it for an eternity.
Jamie felt her eyes widening as she realized what Jack was doing – he was doing something that she had only seen Ricky and Mia do. He was doing something that made the virus in his body a glorious blessing, instead of a curse. His eyes were gold and his mouth was drooling and his blood was running cold in his veins, but he was still Jack; he was still calm; he was still smiling. He was controlling the virus without any effort at all.
She squeezed his putrefied hand. "What makes you think I've forgiven you for what you've done?"
"Nothing. But no matter what you think about me, I'm sticking with you until the very end."
She stared at him for years, seeing past the infection. His eyes flickered green, just like they used to be… and then it was gone. "That's good enough, I guess."
"C'mon. We have to get out of here ASAP," he said, starting to move.
Jamie glanced at Mia. "What about the bitch?"
Jack pulled away from Jamie, strode over to Mia and angrily slammed his foot into her forehead. The girl's head buckled under his shoe like a rotten egg; a tiny torrent of gore and skull and brain matter, and it was done. He twisted his foot a few times, scrambling her face until it was an unrecognizable pile of meat. Wordlessly, he scooped up her mangled body, walked over to the burning ruins and tossed her on the biggest flame he could find. They watched as her body caught fire and fell apart.
"That should stall her for a while," said Jack. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Jamie stared at Mia's broken remains for an eternity. She clicked her teeth together, sighing. "You think we're gonna make it?"
"The city is alive, babe," said Jack after a pause. "It's a living, breathing creature, and it wants us dead."
Almost immediately, a sadistic smile leapt onto Jamie's face. "The Mother?"
"The Motherrrr… The Mother shall lead us—"
"Fuck off, Jack."
He burst into a fit of laughter and gave his girlfriend a hug. "Sorry sweetheart, I couldn't resist. You're so cute when you're pissed off."
"Ha, ha. I'm totally flattered…"
"Oh! Speaking of which, guess who I saw a little while ago? Go ahead, guess! You'll never guess, not in a million years."
"I don't feel like guessing," said Jamie, confused by Jack's sudden burst of playfulness. "Tell me."
"C'mon, we gotta get moving. I'll tell you on the way to the mall."
"Okay," she said. "Hey… I love you, Jack."
The creature grinned a black, disgusting grin. "I love you too."
Jack found the distant silhouette of the Santa Despora Mall on the horizon – a handful of military helicopters buzzed around it like flies – and started to head toward it. Jamie tapped her gun against her thigh, smiled, and followed him.
She would follow him wherever he went.