Apocalypstick

  ~please continue to the next story~

  Killing Tiffany Hudson

  by Gregory Carrico

  The other exterminator sat next to me on the guardrail, trying to catch her breath. She looked carefully at my knife while massaging the sides of her bald, tattooed head. Was she smiling?

  “You’re pretty good with that thing,” she said.

  I suppressed a growl, and glanced down the quickly darkening street for signs of more offspring. There were always more of them in a city, and thanks to her, they’d have no trouble finding us. She’d be lucky if I didn’t leave her here to die. Not that she would fare any better if I stayed; she just wouldn’t die alone.

  I risked a quick scan for other thoughts to see how close the offspring were, and was surprised when a ripple of emotion tickled the back of my mind. Fear. Panic. It wasn’t from her, either. I stood and spun around, trying to get a fix on it, but it was gone. One thing was certain, though: it had to be human.

  “I like somethin’ with a bit of reach, myself,” the girl continued. Her spear had a four foot haft, but it’s slightly curved, serrated blade added another two feet to its length. From the way she used it, it might have been her favorite childhood toy.

  Ignoring her, I scanned the streets and buildings around us for more thoughts. She must have been there to find the humans, too. If we could find them quickly, we stood a chance at reaching a safer spot out in the country. The only thoughts I found were hers, though, and oddly, they were rather buoyant. Happy, even.

  “Lots of big ones out today,” she continued casually. “Sure are different than they were at first. What was your first like?” Her accent was strong, but pleasant. Probably Texas. Her S’s were soft, and her ‘first’ sounded like ‘firsht’.

  I didn’t answer. I needed to know more about her if I was going to fight at her side again. I attuned to her mind and listened to her thoughts. She had some gall, being happy in this paved graveyard. If she had lost it, and was trying to get killed, she should have done it quietly, so I didn’t have to come try to save her.

  Nothing in her surface thoughts explained what she was doing, or why she was so happy. She wasn’t trying to get killed, though; this was just a normal day for her. When she fought, she went full bore. She was an all-or-nothing sort of person, which meant short-lived for an exterminator. How she had survived this long with that philosophy was a complete mystery, and probably nothing short of a miracle.

  “Well?” she asked. She stood up and faced me, and my heart stopped.

  For a second, wavy blonde hair framed her pretty face, tears poured from her soft, brown eyes, and her curious gaze morphed into a tortured, accusing glare. I blinked, and her bald, tattooed scalp returned. Her cheeks were dry, and a half smile twisted her thin lips. My heart beat again.

  “Looked like a dog,” I lied, trying to recover from the shock of my hallucination. Why was she asking about my first? It was hard enough to keep going on without being reminded of that day. It should have been the best day of my life, but now I wanted nothing more than to forget it ever happened.

  It was my last day of high school; the day I finally kissed Tiffany Hudson. My grandfather had promised to give me his 1970 Shelby Mustang, the 350, for getting a full scholarship to his alma mater. It was the perfect start to a new life.

  But life didn’t agree with my plans. I never drove that mustang, never went to college, and never saw Tiffany Hudson again, not in person, anyway. That was the day I started killing. Xipe called us exterminators, but whatever word you wanted to use, it all amounted to the same thing.

  “It would have killed me if Xipe hadn’t been there,” I added softly, still caught between the memory of that day and the present. My ears still rang from blocking so many offspring, but it was fading with rest.

  “Xipe?” she asked incredulously. It sounded like ‘sheep hay’ in her drawl. Close enough. “Yeah, right,” she continued. “I’m already impressed, pal, you don’t have to drop names.”

  I didn’t blame her for not believing me, but I didn’t care either way. I wanted to find the humans and get out of the city while I still had a chance, but a chill crawling up my spine told me that our rest was over. Another quick scan for thoughts found only the lustful, hungry hatred of another offspring.

  “There’s a big one coming. Over there,” I said, pointing at the shattered post office. “What were you thinking, coming to a city? Anyone who’s lived this long should know better, especially one of us.”

  She didn’t answer. We watched, waiting for the beast to show itself. It knew we were there, of course; I could feel its tendrils of mental energy snaking into my head. The sensation of one of these monsters slipping into my mind was vile, but I didn’t want to block it until it was closer. I wanted it to think I was just another hunk of human meat.

  It walked out of the alley by the post office, and strolled towards us. It was a big one. The new girl gripped her spear and braced to fight.

  “Funny,” she said with a short laugh. “I got a camel.”

  “Clydesdale,” I said. “Where’d you ever see a camel?” I added with a slightly mocking chuckle. The offspring used our memories to make us think they were something else; usually a harmless animal that we remembered fondly. It gave them enough time to close in and kill with surprise.

  “I’ve been places,” she said defensively. “I’ll kill this one, if you don’t mind.” It sounded like a brave offer, but in truth it was an acknowledgement that she was already too weak to block. She had finished off half a dozen offspring before I arrived, and was now too exhausted to do more than kill. Using that much power so quickly would have been a beacon to the offspring, just as it had been to me.

  “I mind,” I said, anger starting to boil back to the surface. “If you’re already this wiped out, you’ll only be in my way. There are humans nearby. Go see if you can find them while I keep it distracted, but stay in sight. We’ll have to get out of here soon if we want to live, and it gets dark early here.”

  I didn’t need to read her thoughts to know she thought I was an ass, her expression said it very clearly. Even so, she knew I was right. She jogged to the subway tunnel across the street, and knelt in the shadows of the descending stairs.

  The offspring picked up its pace and trotted towards me, ignoring the girl. Its mental energy strengthened, building for the crippling blast it would deliver when it got a few paces closer. Ignoring my ringing ears, I slammed a razor thin wall of energy between us, severing its links to my mind. The illusory Clydesdale skin vanished, revealing the beast’s true, horrifying form as it lunged to attack.

  Thick, corded muscles bulged beneath vibrant blue skin on a body that looked part gorilla, and part bulldog. Its short, but powerful hind legs and longer, thicker forelimbs faded to yellow hands and feet with wicked blue claws.

  Fleshy knobs resembling ears, a nose, and lips dangled grotesquely from its chin, with empty eye sockets on either side; a vulgar remnant of its heritage. Where a face should have been, twisted bony ridges, resembling an exposed brain, sparked with alien power.

  At fifteen paces, the brainy ridges shivered, and it blasted me with a wave of mental energy. No doubt, this attack would have been sufficient to stun or incapacitate other victims, but its only effect on me was more ringing in my ears as it shattered against my wall. It attacked twice more with its mind before closing in to use its claws. My ears rang, my head throbbed, and a little more of my strength had been sapped by each attack.

  It leapt high into the air to attack with the shark-like jaws in its chest. If it got lucky, or if I messed up, it could bite me in half. Fortunately, offspring were nothing, if not predictable: get close with an illusion, stun with a mental attack, and then eat the defenseless prey.

  I ducked beneath it, knife humming as I slashed, and rolled back to my feet. Black and blue sludge oozed from its wounded belly as it spun around to face me again. I silently thanked Xipe for the knife. It generated a frequency that dis
rupted the offspring’s nanites and kept them from regenerating. More importantly, it let me kill without using more of my own power than was absolutely necessary.

  Instead, I used a tiny bit of power to boost my speed and reaction time. I slashed again as it lunged, barely avoiding its claws. Predictability didn’t make them less dangerous. My own nanites could repair most wounds with enough time and heat, but a strong hit from those claws or teeth might do too much damage too quickly for me to survive. The new girl must have been worried about this, too, since she was running towards me with a lit propane torch.

  By the time she reached me, I had landed a few more stabs and slashes, and the fight was over. The offspring had collapsed into a pool of sludgy flesh and goo.

  “You ok?” she asked, offering the torch.

  “Thanks, but I can’t do that anymore,” I replied.

  “Oh,” she replied. Her expression went from concern to sorrow, and she looked at her feet. “I’m so sorry.”

  Since the nanites used thermal energy to replicate, we could burn a bad wound to kick them into overdrive. The damaged living tissue would be scorched away, painfully, I might add, and replaced with nanites. When the nanites reached a certain percentage of our mass, they would require more heat than our living tissue could produce, and… game over. I was somewhere very near that critical ratio, and didn’t want to push it.

  “How many is that, now?” she asked, looking at the carnage around us.

  “Can’t tell,” I said. The gelatinous corpses from our previous battle had pooled together, making it impossible to count how many we had killed. I had kept count, of course, but Xipe used to say that it didn’t matter how many we killed, only how many were left. He was right, and there could be anywhere from a thousand to a million just in Manhattan.

  “I’ve never seen anyone move like you. It was like you were in three places at once; stabbing, slashing, and parrying all at the same time. Who are you?”

  “All the speed in the world doesn’t matter if there are too many enemies to track in a fight. One hit from the one you didn’t see is all it takes. That one was stronger than most offspring I’ve fought, but that’s why I stay out of cities, and that’s why we need get out of this one. Did you find the humans?”

  “I didn’t look for them. I was watching you,” she replied. “I’m Diane. I’m real glad you showed up when you did.” She stuck her arm out to shake my hand.

  “Crane,” I said, reluctantly. I pretended to clean my knife, though it was already spotless. Nanites slid off of its blade like water off a hot skillet.

  “Crane?” she repeated. She stared at me with Tiffany’s eyes again, weighing what she had seen, and deciding whether or not to believe me. “As in… Crane? Did you pick his name out of respect, or to try and pass as him?”

  I guessed she made up her mind. “I took the name my parents gave me,” I said with an unblinking stare. I forcefully turned my thoughts away from my family.

  “Huh. I’ve been fighting side by side with a legend. Wait ‘til my friends find out.”

  Her sarcasm took me off guard, and I almost laughed aloud, but this was no time or place to let my guard down.

  “Look, we need to find the humans and get them back to wherever they’ve been hiding. If we stay here we’ll bring hell down on this place, then you can die side by side with the legend.”

  She stared at me again, reconsidering. She wanted to ask if it was true. I could hear her thoughts as easily I could her words. She desperately wanted to believe it.

  “Is it true?” It was almost a whisper. She was scared to believe. “They say Xipe knew how to stop it. I never really thought he was real. If he was, or is real, and he did know how to kill them all, he would have done it, right? If you are really Crane, then you know Xipe. Are you really him?”

  “In the flesh,” I said. I didn’t want to have this discussion with her, but her eyes held such hope and desperation that I had to answer her.

  “Speaking of flesh…” she began. She pointed down the deserted street behind me towards a single man walking casually towards us. “Maybe it’s human.”

  I could tell right away that it wasn’t. Its mind was so incredibly powerful that I could sense it without trying, even from this distance. I had faced hosts before, and they were deadly. Where an offspring relied on claws and teeth to kill before consuming its victim’s flesh, a host leached away its victim’s memories, emotions, and thoughts. Before you even knew what was happening, you were an extra in a George Romero film.

  “Let’s get out of sight,” she said. “Please? I hate killing these things. It’s just so sad. I don’t understand how some of us become like you and me, while others end up like… like that. I can barely recall what it was like when we were all just people.”

  “That thing is not just people anymore, and it won’t ever be a person again. We are exterminators, and it needs to die. Now, put your blocks up, and let’s get it before it gets us.”

  “You were human, once, Crane. There are people in this city; scientists and doctors, and they’re close to a cure. I don’t want to kill the hosts if there is a chance we can save them.”

  “Then let me ease your mind. They can’t be saved. Their minds are alien, their souls are shredded, and their humanity is gone. There’s no coming back from that. Death is the last dignity we can give them.”

  “What about us? What are we, then?” She was on the verge of a moral crisis, and was silently pleading with me to tell her there was still hope. There was, but not in the way she wanted to hear.

  “We are the only ones who can do it. We kill them: hosts, offspring, husks, all of them. You are a killer, Diane. Get used to it. You are the first exterminator I’ve seen in six months. We are losing this fight because we forget what we are, and that’s when we die. I know you are looking for hope. Well, look in the mirror. If there is any hope left for humanity, we are it.”

  She bowed her head. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She needed someone to lean on, but for people like us, there was no one. We had only ourselves. The host was about a block away, and the hoard of husks that followed it was coming out of the buildings and alleys. Offspring started showing up, too.

  “Time to go,” I said. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the subway tunnel. “I sense two humans in here. Be careful.”

  “I know, Crane. They are sentries. There’s an entrance to the prison from the sewers, about two blocks from here. That’s where the humans are hiding. It’s fortified, and there are other exterminators defending it. We have doctors, Crane, and… and a baby. Two hundred fourteen of us live here. No, two fifteen, now.”

  “A baby? You have uninfected humans? How many?”

  I didn’t wait for her answer. Offspring were what happened when infected humans had babies. It was no wonder there were so many of them here. Instead of scanning her thoughts, I delved into her memories and saw everything. Even though they were all infected, some of the women were pregnant, or trying to get that way, fully aware of the likely outcome. The doctors and scientists carefully monitored every stage of the process.

  Some of the solar and wind power plants on the roof still worked, and they had a couple diesel generators for backup, while the fuel lasted. They had survived on salvaged food, and though supplies were getting thin, careful rationing, they typically found more on raids into the city.

  I was disturbed by what they were doing here, but with dozens of baddies closing in around us, the time for discussion was over. With our minds connected by my delve, she knew that I was in her head. I doubted she could use the connection as I did, but we certainly knew each other’s surface thoughts.

  We can’t stay together, I thought. Just like we can sense them in greater numbers, they can sense us; together we are a magnet. I’ll lead them away while you get the humans back to safety.

  I was already running before I finished the thought.

  Crane, no! Come with me. We’ll be safe in the prison, she thought.


  I dropped the delve, and burned some power to cover more ground. Each stride became a soaring leap, carrying me ten paces or more. It worked, too. I was like a rabbit in the open, running from a pack of wolves. I put up my blocks to keep the host out of my head, and kept going towards the river.

  Six offspring, all about the size of Great Danes, loped towards me down the middle of the street. I looked up and saw three more leaping from rooftop to rooftop, easily keeping pace with me. I stopped a block from the river, and waited in the middle of the street to make my stand.

  The host was still several blocks away, but it would start its assault on my mental barriers soon. More husks appeared from doorways and around corners, some shambling, others running towards me. The offspring ate or trampled any that got in their way. They reached me first.

  I could have picked them off from a distance, but I let them get closer to conserve my strength. As they came into striking distance, I hit each of them with a quick jab of mental energy, disrupting their brains and dropping them like sacks of meat.

  I used a lot more energy to kill them this way, and it was like a beacon to any mutant that didn’t already know I was there. By the time the first wave of offspring reached me, twice as many were on their way. I just needed to keep them busy until Diane could get her humans to safety.

  The steady mental blasts had already deafened me, and the stabbing pain of each wave sapped my strength and distracted me. I could still hold out for a little while, but it was starting to look like Diane had gotten me killed after all.

  I pushed more power into the knife, enough to kill an offspring with each blow, but it wasn’t enough.

  They were all around me, and the first wave of husks was getting close. An offspring dropped from above, and almost landed on me. I barely got out of its way, and melted it with a single slash. It was getting a bit snug, even in the middle of the street.

  I wanted to have more of them closer before I threw my nuke, as I thought of it, but three offspring were rushing me together. I knelt down on a knee, harnessing all of the power I could muster. When they were almost on top of me, I pushed a burst of energy away from me in a rolling ring. For two blocks, every offspring and most of the husks fell into a pool of blue sludge.

  I conserved enough juice to keep my blocks up, if nothing else, but with luck, I’d have bought enough time to recover and make an escape. My hearing was completely useless, and even my vision had blurred from the mental exertion. I concentrated on the vibrations of Xipe’s knife, and did a quick meditation exercise to focus my mind.

  Instead of relying on my faulty senses, I scanned for thoughts. I was just in time to dodge an offspring that had been on a rooftop above the radius of my burst. It landed next to me, showering me with chunks of shattered pavement. The one I didn’t notice landed on my right calf.

  I rolled over and amazingly pulled away from the beast, but when I couldn’t stand up, I realized that my pulverized leg, from the knee down, was still pinned beneath its claw. The other offspring grappled me from behind, sinking its teeth into my right shoulder.

  Time slowed to a crawl as it rocked forward and bit my arm off. My body tried to repair itself, but every drop of blood I lost, and every ounce of flesh was replaced by replicating nanites. At any moment, the balance would shift, and my living flesh would no longer sustain the nanites with its warmth.

  I sent another ring of sonic energy out, turning all the offspring and husks within twenty yard radius into a gooey mess. It was all I had. My severed arm, still clutching the knife, was an island in gelatinous mutant goo. I’m sure I was in shock, but I managed to fish my arm out and stick it back in place, letting my nanites reconnect the tissue.

  I found the strength to lean up on an elbow and look around. More concrete in front of me crumbled as another offspring from the roof landed. It was odd watching it happen with blurry vision and no sound.

  I figured this would be the one that killed me, but it slumped and started melting where it landed with an arrow sticking out of its back. A short, dark haired man was running towards me beneath a hail of arrows. The deadly rain bit into the offspring coming down from the roofs. The dark haired man punched and kicked, melting offspring and husks with each hit. Another exterminator!

  Down the street, eight humans with bows launched arrows into the fray. Another exterminator joined the first, killing the wounded offspring and husks, while Diane stayed close to the archers, destroying any mutants that came their way.

  Diane I thought, linking our minds once more. I’m sorry to do this to you.

  Like Xipe had done to me, I imprinted all of my thoughts, memories, and experiences into her mind. She instantly knew everything I knew, like she had experienced my life. Her shock turned to revulsion as she understood what I had done.

  The rumors that Xipe had the power to contain and destroy the plague were true. He knew how to change the nanites into anti-particles he called antites. They would neutralize and convert every nanite they touched into an antite, starting a chain reaction that would begin slowly, but would eventually spread across the world, wiping out the parasites and anything infected by them.

  Crane! You could have stopped it. You had the power to stop it and chose not to act. You, the first exterminator; our hero, you doomed us. You could have ended it, but you kept fighting, and now it has spread too far.

  One of the exterminators knelt next to me with a propane torch, but I shook my head. “I’m over the line. I can’t burn anymore,” I said.

  “Dear God,” he whispered, looking behind me. The concrete and railing along the water’s edge crumbled beneath a clawed foot thicker than an oil-drum. A section of the shattered street slid into the river as an offspring the size of a whale pulled itself up from the water. At least a dozen others of various sizes, the smallest larger than the ones I had just killed, followed.

  I fell onto my back and relaxed. I wished I could have seen the rippled, wind-whipped clouds racing overhead. My blurred vision turned the world into an impressionist’s rendering of the apocalypse. I had dodged my violent, impending doom for the last time. I had one last task to complete before accepting the end that fate, or I had chosen.

  I can’t change what I’ve already done, Diane. I am dying. Nanites are leaching the last warmth from my flesh. I couldn’t use the weapon now, if wanted to. It’s in your hands. If any of mankind still exist out there, you can save them. But you’ll have to kill everyone else.

  You’ve already killed us all, Crane. A year ago, maybe ten thousand people would have died. Now, it will be a miracle if that many survive. There might not even be any left to save, but you expect me to weigh our lives against that possibility? I already know what your choice would be.

  She stood up and looked towards the behemoth coming down the street. A building toppled in its wake after the thing lumbered through the corner like it was made of popsicle sticks. It lumbered through the corner of a building, toppling it in its wake.

  His body was failing. Was he seeing through Diane’s eyes, or his own? He couldn’t reason it out. Memories flashed through his awareness, blending with reality until he couldn’t tell what was real and what was fantasy.

  “The others are coming,” a man’s voice called. “We just have to hold them off for a minute. Diane! Quit brushing your hair. Let’s go!”

  She didn’t hesitate. It spread out like a soft breeze through the crumbling city, a ripple of pale blue light, so faint and fast that most didn’t even see it. Every living being it touched suffered. Most died instantly, but not all. Most of the survivors died later, unable to recover from large portions of their bodies suddenly melting away. None were completely untouched.

  I tried to wipe the sweat from my cheek, but my arm wouldn’t move. It wasn’t sweat on my cheek, anyway. My body was cooling. Nanites flowed off of me like dry water. I was melting, just like all of the offspring I had killed. It didn’t hurt much.

  With our minds still delved, Diane and I experi
enced each other’s final moments. She was still largely human, so she was in agony as the alien portions of her body died and separated from her flesh.

  Somehow, even as she was dying, she thought of the people hiding here in what she thought of as ‘the safe zone.’ She thought of her sister, Tina, who, that same day, became a mother to a healthy newborn child. It meant that there was hope for mankind, after all, and she felt happiness through her suffering.

  My eyes might have been closed, or they might have melted away, but I knew that I wasn’t seeing the real world. The flitting bits of data flashing through my brain took me back to Tiffany Hudson’s house on our last day of high school.

  Her dog attacked me on the back deck, but Xipe showed up and killed it. He saw that I was infected, too, but because I had resisted becoming a host or a husk, he implanted his memories and experiences in my mind, making me Earth’s first human exterminator.

  He had already exterminated dozens of my neighbors, and had traced the last of the infected here, to Tiffany’s house. Now that I knew, I had to finish his work, or let the alien plague spread across the Earth.

  I didn’t think I could do it, but his voice in my head urged me on. Killing Tiffany’s little brother had been almost more than I could bear, but with the heavy consequences of failure impressed in my mind, I kept killing.

  Her little sisters, her parents, even her visiting grandparents had to die. They knew something wasn’t right when they saw family members melt into pools of nanite sludge, but they knew nothing of any infection. They only knew that I was killing them.

  I found Tiffany last, cowering in her bedroom closet. We both wept when she saw the knife in my hand.

  Xipe had reached the nanite tipping point, too, but we had stopped the alien plague that destroyed his world and countless others. He was the last of his kind, but he seemed eager to die knowing that I would carry on in his place, ready to create and use antites if the plague returned and couldn’t be contained.

  I was still crying as I walked down the sidewalk in front of Tiffany’s house. Yes, for the killing I had done, but also for the killing I had not done. She stood in her bedroom window, watching me leave. Tears streaked her pretty face, and blond curls fell down over her soft brown eyes as she pressed her sludge covered hands against the window.

  God forgive me. I couldn’t do it.

  But as the last images flickered and vanished, I knew that no forgiveness awaited me.

  The end

  A note to the reader

  About the Author

  Greg Carrico is a former Dental and Practice Management Consultant, software trainer, and salesdude. After enduring years of torture in the dental and technology industries, he felt uniquely qualified for his new career of writing horror and dark science fiction stories.

  When not creating new worlds and plotting their destruction, Greg reviews indie books at his blog, Live the Story. He lives his story in Central New York with his wife and three small canine overlords, who he faithfully serves by spreading the word about the horrors of puppy mills, and the joys of adopting the dogs rescued from them.

  Get in touch:

  www.gramico.com

  www.gramico.com/blog

  https://www.facebook.com/GregCarricoAuthor

  https://twitter.com/@gregorycarrico

  https://www.shelfari.com/gregcarrico

  https://pinterest.com/gregorycarrico/

  https://www.goodreads.com/Gramico

  I would like to acknowledge and thank:

  https://keren-r.deviantart.com/

  https://axeraider70.deviantart.com/

  www.obsidiandawn.com

  for the use of their brushes in the cover art

  and

  www.hellostranger.com/solarsister

  for the lipstick font

  Since you’ve made it this far, here are a few more pages to enjoy:

  Preview of:

  Children of the Plague

  by Greg Carrico

  Prologue: Waiting for the Scream

  Lanni leaned face-first against her flimsy bedroom door, waiting for the scream. The phony wood grain pressed shallow lines into her forehead and flattened nose, and she could just make out the ghostly scent of two-year-old paint.

  She relaxed her grip on the door handle just enough to let the prickling flow of blood return to her fingers. Each sensation was an anchor; something to cling to against the rising tide of pressure behind her eyes. Though they helped distract her from the dull, but constant pain she already felt, they were not an inoculation against what she knew would come.

  Any second now…

  Pain was seldom worse than the anticipation of it, but Lanni knew exactly what to expect, and it scared her. Her neck and shoulders leached tension from the thick air, making the pressure in her head even worse. She hated waiting almost as much as hearing her mother’s screams rip through the thin walls of their mobile home.

  The continual sounds of her mother’s suffering weren’t easy to bear, but some of her screams were different; they reached right into Lanni’s soul. She knew it was crazy, but they had a physical, painful effect on her.

  Alex, her twin brother, felt it too. They had both been plagued with sudden, odd headaches for weeks, but for the last two days, the pain had been relentless, and this morning, when the screaming started, it grew magnitudes worse. Now, with her mother wailing in agony only a few paces away, the pain was climbing to new levels.

  They found the situation easier to deal with when they were together. Even though they didn’t discuss it, her pain was muted in his company, and she could tell it helped him, too.

  At that moment, however, she was alone with nothing but the feel of her cool bedroom door against her warm face, and the faint smell of paint to help her tune out the throbbing pulse in her temples.

  Oh God, here it comes.

  The long, moaning cries from the end of the hall settled into a quicker rhythm of higher pitched barks. It was the same pattern every time, and it meant one of the big screams was imminent. Even the already tense air knew it was coming. It coiled around her, tighter and tighter; a giant, invisible snake squeezing the air from her chest, until finally…

  The scream.

  It’s just a sound. It can’t really hurt me.

  But thinking that didn’t make it true. It did really hurt her. It bashed into her tender head like a Louisville Slugger. Even when the scream finally died down, the pain lived on, and it got worse every time. She didn’t know how many more she could take.

  Where is that ambulance?

  With luck, she’d have a two minute reprieve before the next bad contraction. That was more than enough time to walk a few feet down the hall to Alex’s room.

  Despite an overwhelming sense of urgency, she couldn’t afford to give in to her fear, not even a tiny bit. She walked calmly down the narrow hall and tapped on her brother’s door. The ‘Barging In’ rule surely wouldn’t apply at a time like this, but sticking to her routine helped her keep a grip on her self-control, so she waited for him to answer.

  “Alex?” she called. It was barely more than a whisper.

  More than anything, she wanted to be out of the hallway before the next scream. She glanced nervously at her parents’ door, now only a few feet away, as though a monster was about to smash it down.

  There’s no such thing as monsters, dummy. This is perfectly normal. All pregnant women scream and cry.

  Something in those screams scared her, though, and whatever she tried to tell herself, it was not normal. She recognized the gasping and whimpering, already starting again, as the air coiled tighter around her.

  Oh, no. Not yet…

  “Alex!” She was louder this time, and a bit panicky.

  Her father’s deep voice rumbled softly through the walls like distant thunder, muting her mother’s exhausted panting. But despite his almost magically soothing tone, her mother panted faster and louder. The snake was still coiling.

  Screw the
‘Barging In’ rule…

  She shoved the door open, but it bounced off of something on the other side and snapped shut again, knocking her backwards.

  “Owe! Dammit!” a guy’s voice said. It wasn’t Alex.

  The door opened about two inches, and a vertical slice of a wide, freckled face peered through the crack. It was Alex’s enormous friend from their football team.

  “Jacob? What are you doing here?” She pushed the door, but neither he nor it budged. “Move. I need to come in.”

  “Not now, squirt,” he whispered, and closed the door.

  Anger and disbelief overpowered her fear.

  Squirt? Did he just close a door in my face? In my own house?

  Her father’s voice grew louder as he tried to talk over her mother’s intensifying groans.

  “Okay. Okay. You’re alright. Squeeze my hand. It’s alright,” he said in a continuous litany.

  “Oh… Ohhh NOOO!” her mother cried in a trembling, high-pitched voice. “It’s bad, David. It’s so bad. I don’t want… Don’t… Please don’t let me die!” Every word sounded forced. She was struggling to keep up the fight; to live.

  The door opened when Lanni tried it again, and she slipped into the smallish room, ready to punch Jacob in his big nose if he got in her way. Alex was at his desk, sketching on an oversized pad with colored pencils, as if nothing else in the world mattered. His haunted face was nearly as pale as his paper. He looked so much worse than he had just a couple of hours earlier.

  “Look, pipsqueak,” Jacob hissed, standing up from the edge of the bed, “he won’t talk to you right now. You know how he gets, so just go back to your little lair and let him draw.” He grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around to face the door.

  She had no hope of resisting him, but she defiantly planted her feet and made him push, anyway. At six-foot-two, with arms like a teenage Hulk, he had little trouble. He was only a year ahead of her, but even for an eighth grader, he was a veritable giant.

  “What’s the matter with you? This is my house,” she said in disbelief. “Let go of me!”

  “Just knock it off and get out of here, okay? I don’t want to hurt you,” Jacob said. Something in his tone sounded odd; less sure of himself than usual.

  “Hurt me?” It was the last straw. Whatever his reasons were for acting like this, she had had enough of it. She kicked his shin with her heel, and stomped down on his sock-clad ankle.

  “Ow! What the…”

  As he reflexively hopped onto his other foot, she jammed her shoulder into his chest and shoved. ‘Distract and destroy,’ Sensei Rumiko always said. It worked. He stumbled backwards and fell on the bed.

  Her racing heart pumped more pain into her head, but it didn’t keep her from noticing the rage boiling up in Jacob’s face.

  “That’s right. Get up and grab me again, because I do want to hurt you!” she said. She felt like she was watching the situation unfold from a tiny room in her mind. She had every reason to be upset, but this lust for violence wasn’t like her. It wasn’t like Jacob to be so forceful either.

  He jumped back up, looking like he wanted to tackle her.

  Was this really happening? Couldn’t he hear her mother screaming and pleading for her life in the next room? Had the entire world gone crazy?

  “Jacob, get out of my house! You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “Alex told me to come over,” he growled. “He said it was important, and I’m not leaving until he tells me to. So get lost, and quit bothering everyone!”

  She gasped as his iron-like fingers clamped onto her right shoulder. As his other arm reached past her to open the door, she reached up and pinched the thin skin on his triceps, just above his elbow.

  He jerked his arm back with an angry yelp, while Lanni took advantage of his distraction and grabbed his other hand. She twisted until his pinky was on top, and in a single, fluid motion, she rolled his fingertips towards the ceiling, and pressed towards his chest. He dropped to his knees like a bag of rocks, leaning forward to relieve some of the painful pressure on his wrist.

  Lanni’s rage was in full swing. “Are you seriously making me do this?” she asked, red-faced with exertion and anger. “My mother could be dying, my twin brother is sick and no one knows what’s wrong with him, and you still think this is the time to mess with me?” She pressed harder on his wrist, forcing his face closer to the floor.

  “Lisa… Lisa-Ann! You’re… you’re gonna break my wrist!” he stammered.

  “Yeah, I think I am,” she growled. “And it’ll serve you right. Are you ‘roid raging or something? You come into my house and push me around? Listen to that! That’s my mother!”

  “I’m… Ow! I’m sorry! You can let go now. You made your point.”

  She slapped the inside of his elbow, bending his arm and putting even more pressure on his wrist. “If you ever put your bigugly hands on me again, you won’t get them back.” She gave him a final shove, and sent him rolling sideways into the bed frame. “Now get out of here!”

  Alex never even looked up from his drawing. It was the local high school mascot: a knight in full armor with his sword raised high, and a bold, red ‘S’ emblazoned on his shield. He could draw that one in his sleep, and that’s just what he seemed to be doing.

  Jacob winced as he stood up, cradling his hand. “You know I let you do that, squirt. You’re getting pretty good, though.” He was embarrassed, and trying to sound tough, but the real anger was gone from his voice.

  “Bye, Jacob.” She sat in the chair next to Alex, and watched his hands dance across the sketch pad. His talent for tuning out the world was epic, but as their headaches had grown more intense, his focus had become more than a little trance-like. His glassy eyes leaked at the corners, and if he even knew she was in the room, he showed no sign of it.

  “I’m real sorry I grabbed you, Lanni. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just… all this is really freaking me out. Alex is being weirder than usual, and your mom… is she having problems? I know she’s in labor, but she doesn’t sound good, and Alex hasn’t said a thing.”

  Lanni turned and stared at Jacob, dumbfounded. “Labor? She’s only four months, so, yeah; I’d say she’s having problems.”

  Jacob’s face went red, and he looked at the floor. Despite their little melee, he wasn’t trying to be mean. Saying the right thing just wasn’t one of his strengths. He was usually a pretty gentle guy, even though he tried his best to hide it.

  “She sounds bad,” Lanni said, “but she’ll be alright. Being pregnant hurts, doesn’t it? That’s all it is.” She sounded less confident with each word. What she knew about being pregnant wouldn’t fill a thimble, but despite her words, she suspected that this was anything but normal.

  Jacob nodded confidently. “I’m sure you’re right, Lanni. Maybe she’s having triplets this time. That could be it. And what mother wouldn’t scream with three or four kids like you in her belly.” He was trying to be funny, reassuring, and comforting all at once, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  It wasn’t his fault, though. With all of the dire news on TV, very few people had anything to be cheery about. The stories ranged from deadly pandemics, to biblical prophecies of last days coming true, and everything in between. Something was obviously very wrong in the world.

  Pregnant women were dying in startlingly high numbers across the globe. The few women having stillbirths or miscarriages were the lucky ones. The rest died in painful, premature births of seriously deformed and even mutated offspring. It was enough to make the nut-jobs predicting the end of the world sound perfectly reasonable.

  The realities of the situation were crushing, particularly given her mother’s condition. There was no real reason to believe that her mother would be one of the lucky few, yet she refused to abandon hope. As long as those terrible cries kept coming, there was still a chance, and she would cling to that slim hope until it was gone.

  The scratching of Alex’s pencil on his pad stopped,
and the entire house went eerily quiet. He suddenly lurched up from the desk, knocking his chair over backwards, and sending a cascade of colored pencils to the floor. He just stared straight ahead, ignoring Lanni and Jacob like he was still in his trance.

  “Dude!” Jacob said, putting his hand to his chest. “You scared the… Aahhg!” He interrupted himself with a high pitched gasp of pain, falling once more to his knees, and clutching the sides of his head. It would have looked comical, like a scene from one of those d-list horror flicks he and Alex loved so much, if not for everything else that was happening.

  Before Lanni could react, nauseating pain hammered her head, and washed over her body. She saw stars through blurred vision, and ringing filled her ears. Her sense of balance abandoned her. Somehow, she caught herself on the desk; leaning heavily against it with both hands. Confused, she wondered if the house had been struck by lightning.

  Alex was little more than a blur of motion as he stepped over his whimpering friend, and brushed purposefully past her into the hall.

  With virtually no reprieve, the pain struck again. It felt like her head was being crushed and trying to explode at the same time. Her nausea became an inexplicable and almost overpowering hunger.

  As her sight returned, she found herself staring at Jacob’s flushed throat, with an insane urge to sink her teeth into it. If she hadn’t been immobilized by shocking jolts of pain, she might have done so.

  Still not recovered from the previous assault, her vision blurred and her ears rang again, as yet another wave hit. Her muscles twitched and jumped, treading the thin boundary between agony and numbness. Even clutching the edge of Alex’s desk, she barely kept her feet.

  She gasped for air, but couldn’t draw a full breath. Her heart quivered in her chest. Even with the overload of sensations wracking her body, in a moment of shocking clarity, she knew she was dying.

  She wanted to resist it, to fight, to scream, but with the strange energy pulsing through her, her body didn’t seem to get any of her mind’s signals.

  NO!

  A low, primal growl of rage clawed its way into her consciousness, but she couldn’t draw enough breath to give it voice.

  Panic!

  This isn’t happening! I won’t let this happen!

  With every ounce of will she could muster, she forced her body to respond, and was rewarded with a tiny, convulsive gasp of air. It felt like a great victory, but it was fleeting. She couldn’t hold out against the current of power trying to wash her out of her body. The world went utterly dark.