Chapter Four
Luke
THE CREATURE ONLY recognized a few things, but he knew this well-the smell of blood.
Other creatures were around him. They smelled it, too. Some primitive urge propelled his legs towards it, and he was faintly aware of the gathering slobber in his mouth. Otherwise, this smell consumed his entire brain with a warm, ravenous redness. The others around him were also consumed, growling and groaning with hunger, driving him forward.
Small things with the warm smell darted among their legs. The panicked frenzy of these small things made their furry bodies emit even more of the smell-hot blood rushing through their long ears and legs-until he and his fellow creatures could think of nothing else but biting and filling their mouths with that blood. The others swept out their arms and started scooping up the fleeing animals and ripping the little bodies. He himself managed to grab one by its slender leg and, oblivious to the animal's ferocious kicking, tore into its belly with his teeth.
As the sweet, acidic juices flooded his mouth and bathed his face in vivacious heat, a glow of pleasure flooded his brain. It was soothing. He had forgotten what it felt like to be soothed. The sensation calmed his mind enough to snap him into a moment of clarity, and he looked around him with sudden consciousness.
He recognized his fellow creatures-they were humans. Spindled and ravaged by the elements, but definitely humans. And he was also a human-a man.
The thought stunned him so much that he physically stumbled back. Not only did he remember he was a man, but he remembered this was not the first time this memory had returned to him.
He looked down at his hands, still clutching the dying remains of what he now recognized as a rabbit. In a shudder of revulsion, he threw it to the ground and started using his arm to wipe the blood and gastric juices from his mouth.
Immediately, one of the other creatures-a small woman-grabbed the rabbit's body and devoured it. A powerful burning in the base of his skull urged him to grab the rabbit back, to eat more, but he fought back the urge.
The domineering hunger and sickening repulsion battled back and forth in his mind, so he stumbled away from the feasting crowd. Looking forward, he noticed much of the overwhelming smell was coming from enormous crates. The awakening part of his brain forced him to look past the crates, to focus on anything but his maddening appetite.
Beyond the crates, beyond the trees, was a shockingly clear sky, so bright that it made his eyes ache. Standing still and stark as trees themselves were dark figures-more humans. Not warped and insane like himself and the others around him, but calm and straight-limbed and quiet humans.
Seeing them strengthened his memory of himself. He had been like them once, he was sure. An image, vague as a fleeting dream, hovered in the back of his mind-it was himself, standing tall, running his fingers through his soft, dark hair.
He brought his now blood-clotted hand up to his head. His fingers felt distant and numb, but he could sense the muddy clots and sharp bits of twigs in his hair now.
As he stood in this moment of sheer confusion, a twinge of mysterious emotion tweaked his heart as one of the gray-clad figures suddenly lifted her helmet. For a brief second, the man glimpsed her face before she turned and started vomiting to the side. Her creamy skin and hazel bolts of eyes recalled another pair of beautiful eyes he had seen recently.
The word Miranda jolted into the forefront of his brain and this time it brought back not a slow trickle of memories, but a vivid flash that lit his entire being like a burning bolt of electricity...
HE SAT IN an uncomfortably straight-backed, salmon-pink chair, his forehead resting on both palms. He imagined that the mussy black hair falling over his face curtained his anguish from the world. Only later would he have the selflessness to realize that everyone around him was too absorbed in their own anguish to notice his.
Every sound was muffled, strangled. Faint beeps pinged in the distance. Footsteps shuffled up to him on the brown carpet, but he could not lift his head. Eventually, a voice that rasped like elm leaves in cold wind pulled his attention up.
"I'm ready to go now, dear."
Lowering his hands and peering up through his hair, the man-barely a man at this point-glanced at the woman whose face sagged under the exponentially growing burden of her years. His grandmother. Her neck caved into an unnatural hollow, as if someone had cleanly scooped out her throat. He could barely look at her a moment before turning away, an icy clench around his heart, though he wanted to look her solidly in the face, to be an example of bravery.
"`Kay," he said.
As he turned his eyes to the side, he noticed for the first time another woman standing beside his grandmother. Despite the choking in his throat, an involuntary part of him tingled awake at this woman's curved waste he could glimpse in the open gap of her lab coat. But he kept his eyes down, afraid she would see the watery blur in them.
"Mr. Oldfield?" The woman's voice lilted high and sweet, but not with the false optimism that he had grown used to hearing in many nurses' voices. Still not trusting himself to look up, he nodded.
"Miranda Miller." The woman extended a steady hand into his field of view and held it patiently open. "I'm a technician from Icarus Labs. We are researching cures for cancer, and your grandmother has graciously offered to volunteer tissue samples when she comes in for her treatments. We'll be seeing each other a lot in the next few months, I think."
His grandmother laid her withered hand on Miranda's arm. "This young lady has been the first one to give me an honest answer about anything. She even listened to me prattle on about you. Shake her hand, dear, don't be rude."
Loosely placing his fingers in her palm, he let her give his hand one quick shake, though her warmth lingered like a heated stone after she let go. He lifted his chin. Her autumn fire eyes enveloped him in a way he thought he could never forget. He could only stammer, stunned by the glow of her smile as she said, "Nice to meet you, Luke."
AN EXCRUCIATING PAIN at the base of his skull wrenched the man away from the beautiful calm of his memory. He wailed and collapsed to his knees, feeling as if something was squeezing his entire head into a pulp. Desperately, he tried to cling to the last remnant of the images that had already vanished from his mind.
Luke, Luke, Lu...
Gurgling hisses from the other creatures' feasting drowned out even this thought, and he collapsed in convulsions, vacant of anything but the stabbing pain blissfully fading into blankness.