“Hey, Hugh!” I went with the bold approach.
He, it, came to a halt. He’d been close.
“Remember me? We have a history, you and me.”
Much like he had with my body and Clarence’s, he was searching through Scarlett’s mind for the appropriate words and responses. Like a mental rolodex.
“You are slave,” he hissed.
“Slave?” I figured he’d got his wires crossed somewhere. “I’m Tim. We work together. I get food, you keep the machine running.”
Another long delay as he thought on my words and attempted to find the appropriate response. “We are Many. You are slave.”
I would have been sweating if I was corporeal. Slaves weren’t generally treated too good. I needed time. I would kow-tow and bow to this virus if I had to, but only for as long as it took for me to be on firmer ground.
“I am Tim.”
“Slave.” There was no delay, and he was not getting his words mixed up.
I gritted my teeth. If they were real, I would have shattered them under the pressure. “I am slave.” I am going to kill you. I don’t know if he felt that thought, but I could feel an aligning of every piece of that virus within him as if preparing for war. “Slave, slave, I am slave!” That seemed to appease him.
“Kill?”
“Are you asking yourself if you should kill me? I can be useful to you, Hugh.”
“I AM NOT HUGH!” he roared, and the part of the brain I stood on shook like we were in an earthquake. “We are Many.” It wasn’t as loud but nearly as forceful.
“Fine, fine you’re Manny.” I don’t think he got the difference; he might have attributed it to an accent. I’d yield what I had to so that I could survive, but even just this small measure of defiance felt good. “Manny, I can help you.”
“Help is not needed. We rule this world now.”
Adept and intelligent. Great, the virus which had started out dumber than a pile of shitty sticks was now hurtling toward Einstein-ian thoughts. Wouldn’t doubt if he started doing quantum physics next week. No, that wouldn’t be possible; it was hunger, a constant gnawing hunger that fueled these beasts. Nothing would ever quench that thirst. They might become more cunning in how they hunted, but they would never build monuments or cities. Their sole reason for existence was to feed. That was my lifeline. That was what I needed to tie myself to.
“I can help you get food.” He didn’t move in closer, didn’t move away either. “Maybe you know it, maybe you don’t, but your food source is getting more and more difficult to come across.” I didn’t give him a chance to think. “There are more zombies … er, Mannys than ever before. They have eaten more humans. It’s getting harder and harder to come across meat. I can get all you’ll ever want.”
“How?”
“You hunt by what? Sight, smell maybe? I KNOW, I fucking know, where people go when they are hiding. I can bring you to them.”
“Show me now!” he demanded.
“Not a chance. I give everything away, you kill me. Not going to happen.”
I felt like my life was a bowling ball and Manny had it sitting on the head of a pin as he decided a course of action.
“Slave will show food. I will keep Slave … for now.”
An ice-cold feeling flowed through me. I know I don’t have a body, so you’re going to have to bear with me. I was pure thought or consciousness, or maybe I was just merely a bacterial stream. I don’t fucking know, but I brought with me all of the thoughts and feelings I’d had when I was whole. So when I say I felt like someone had just shoved a frozen ice pick into the small of my spine, that’s exactly what it felt like.
I let out a sigh to Manny’s words. It was a reprieve. It would give me time to strategize, to build my strength. I thought about going and taking my belittling out on Scarlett, maybe kick her to the curb, then I thought I might actually need her help. “This day could not suck any worse.” And yet it ended up doing just that.
Chapter 3
The other part of me, the Tim-Clarence hybrid, was fading fast, shock and blood loss taking their toll. The problem was that we were still tied together. What he was feeling, so was I. A five-year-old with a wiffle ball bat could have beat me into the ground. Manny had finally been able to push the bathroom door open as Clarence had fallen to the ground, and he’d left a blood coated snail-trail as Manny had nearly propelled him to the tub in his haste to get to the body. Clarence-Me feebly raised our good arm to ward off Manny. It didn’t work so good, Manny snapped our/his thumb off, chewing it loudly, grinding the thick bone into gristle as he swallowed.
I screamed the scream that the Clarence-Me thing could not. “I’m dying!” I sobbed.
Manny dropped down onto his/her knees and ripped into the immense bulk of Clarence-Me’s mid-section. I was horrified as our stomach and liver were exposed and then bitten into. Clarence-Me’s eyes began to rapidly flutter, nerve endings firing wildly as we began to breathe our last breaths. I was in an anguish so deep I did not believe I would ever be able to climb free from its grip. The duality of what was happening played out in my mind. Death came; he was not an embodiment, at least not one that I could see, but he was there, and his presence was felt like a bitter cold wind on a winter’s night. Clarence-Me’s heart froze as he gripped it within his glacial hands. The part of me that was being torn away could not begin to comprehend what was happening. Thought or rationale were gone, the Me that was leaving was an entity of pure thought, emotion, and it was petrified. The connection was lost just moments after I felt the vilest, most torturous hell-infused feelings. It was malice and malevolence in its purest form. Mercy and compassion were emotions it did not even possess the capability to understand. Its intent, its sole purpose, was evil. That was all it knew, that was all it would ever know. It was much like Manny in its single-mindedness.
I was catatonic, I don’t know for how long. Manny had completely gnawed through Clarence. The flesh had been stripped clean, the muscle, the organs, everything, even a fair number of the bones. Somehow, a hundred and ten-pound woman had taken in nearly three hundred pounds of food. It hardly seemed possible; that was when the reek assailed my nose. It was that, more than anything that had pulled me up from the depths. I was looking through Manny’s eyes. He had finally stood and was looking down upon the skeletal remains of his meal, maybe looking for some morsel he’d somehow missed. I took note that the bathroom, which had been splashed with a heavy dose of blood, was now nearly three inches deep with shit. Black and brown swirls of it, lazily churning around as Manny moved. It coated everything like an offal flooring. It was deep enough that it had broken over the transition barrier from the tile flooring in the bathroom to the carpet in the bedroom.
A pool of the sludge was spreading out and onto the rug, staining the 70’s yellow shag into hues of liquidy blood. This wasn’t my first glimpse at the after-effects of eating an entire person, but they’d never been me and I wanted to be sick.
“I wish you’d died, you sick fuck.” It was Scarlett, she was back. “So that’s what’s left of you? I hope I shit on it.” She was full of vehemence. She was also trying not to gag.
I thought about telling her it was shit, but on some level she knew. I was still having difficulty grasping my faculties. Part of me had died, and we’d never been offered the chance at redemption. Or I’d missed the clues. I was fucked. Even if I became a boy scout, right this very moment, and helped frail old bitches across the road until the day I died, I would not be able to balance my life ledger. And if I wanted to stick around, it meant acquiescing to Manny’s demands, and it was safe to assume that didn’t involve choir practice and Sunday school. My mind was racing in circles, until finally it came across a thought so profound I had to stop and marvel before I started to congratulate myself.
“I’ve won!” I spun with my arms in the air.
“You won? What did you win? Douche bag of the decade?”
“You have a potty mouth for a lady.”
> “Fuck you.”
“Want to know what I’ve won?” She didn’t respond, but of course she wanted to know. “I died.”
“I wish.”
“Well part of me did anyway. And that poor bastard got dragged down to a place that I wouldn’t wish even on you.”
“So what?”
“So what? You don’t get it. Can’t lose a soul twice. My other Me took the hit for this Me; he took one for the team.” I was as gleeful as a Catholic schoolgirl that came across a box of tapered altar candles. Use your most perverted thought with that last sentence and it will make complete sense. “I don’t ever have to pay for my actions. I don’t have to grovel at Jesus’ feet or beg for…” I didn’t say the last part; it was too fresh. That thing, that being was not something I ever wanted to dwell on ever again. Its black eyes had found mine before the connection had been snuffed out. What I felt could never be explained with human words or thoughts, for it possessed neither. “Well, you get the drift.”
“Yeah, you’re an asshole vampire.”
“I guess sort of. How cool is that? I feel so unencumbered. Like I can do whatever the fuck I want. How liberating is that?!” I was loving my new lease on life.
“More food, Slave,” Manny beckoned.
Scarlett squeaked in fear. My previous mirth squashed out like an old cigarette butt.
“Slave?” Scarlett asked.
“Shut up, BITCH!” I shrieked. There was a pecking order and I was going to enforce it. For now, it was going to be Manny, slave, then way way down below was bitch.
Scarlett started laughing. I got a small measure of revenge as Manny immediately encircled the insignificant vestiges of her that still remained. He was preparing to obliterate her remains.
“Manny, I, umm we, no, YOU, YOU need her!”
He was suspicious. I could feel the tingling of his prodding for the truth.
“Like me, she knows where food is!”
“Food? Like people? I’ll never lead you two bastards to anything!” She screamed.
“Do you want to live?”
“Not like this,” she said truthfully.
“You don’t ever want to see your children again?”
I struck a raw nerve. Of course she did, but if Manny or myself ever caught sight of the whelps, they were as good as stomach fodder.
“Manny, let her live, and we’ll go find food right away.”
“Food is good. She lives for now, Slave. You do as you promised.” I could feel him pulling back.
“Why, why do you want me around?” She was on the verge of tears.
“To torture is the obvious reason.” She hitched when I said those words. “But there’s more. I may need your help; this virus is more suspicious and much smarter than either of the two parasites I’ve dealt with previously.”
“Ta … two? You’ve been in two other bodies? What are you?”
She was pulling back from me, much more afraid of me than Manny.
“I’m a man trying to survive, that’s all.”
“You’re no man, you’re a monster. Who’d want to live behind a zombie’s eyes making deals and watching the things it does to the people you lead it to?”
“Oh, baby, I didn’t sit back,” I said proudly. “I was an active participant.”
“You … you ate people?”
“I’m a growing boy. I have to eat.”
She gagged and retched.
“It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”
“Get out of my head!” she screamed.
“Yeah, there’s little chance of that, and you should probably shut the hell up. Manny’s not a big fan of shouting. Listen, I’m not thrilled to be in a waif of a woman’s body. You’re about as intimidating as rabid chipmunks. I promise that if an opportunity presents itself, I will leave this body and take another one.”
She collected herself. “You know you sneered when you called Manny the parasite, but did you just hear your own words?”
“I’m a man, dammit!”
“No shouting.”
“If I didn’t need you…”
She was shaken, that was clearly evident, but I got the distinct impression my threats did not add to that fear level. “What, what more could you possibly do to me?”
“We haven’t even got started, princess.”
“Let’s go, Slave,” she said condescendingly. “Go find some food MUSH!”
“You’ll pay for this. We’re not through.” I turned my attention to Manny. “I need control of this body.”
“No! NO goddamned way!” Scarlett shrieked. “I’d rather have the other asshole running things rather than you!”
Manny’s answer was much more subdued although it was identical. “No. You tell me where to go and I will do so.”
“We can’t work like this. I tried it the first time when I was in my own body. The delay between direction and action nearly got us killed.”
“Where is that body?”
“Dead.” I didn’t see the trap for what it was. I was outsmarted by a virus.
“Where was the advantage then?”
“I, um, I was tricked.”
“You were tricked into death?” Manny asked.
Scarlett was laughing in the background. It was close to a laugh that could slip over into lunacy, but at this exact moment, she thoroughly seemed to be enjoying herself.
I did as I was told, although I did lead him into the now empty underground shelter.
“What are you doing!?” Scarlett seemed nervous, more so than if we just meant to desecrate her underground lair.
“We need some things from here, and maybe I can find a clue to Yorley’s destination.”
“You leave her alone!”
“Oh that’s doubtful. She’s the reason I’m in this mess.” I was getting accomplished at being able to do two things at once. I was having a conversation with Scarlett while also setting Manny to some tasks that needed to be done.
“This is not food,” Manny had groused.
“This will help us,” I told him as he picked up a small back pack and filled it up with supplies I told him to shove in there.
“You’re in this mess because you’re psychotic!” Scarlett shouted again.
“I can hear you, bitch. We can all hear you. We’re inside this small fucking skull of yours. Keep your voice down. The more you do talk, the more I want you to die. Then your babies will be orphans. Is that what you want?”
She complied. Although if she had a middle finger, it would have been directed at me. I know now I should have just killed her then. I was battling on two fronts. My hope had been to use her as an ally as we took over Manny, but that was not to be the case. Manny and I were more aligned than Scarlett and I could ever be. This was not working out quite how I had imagined. And to top it off, I was smart enough to realize I was third in the brains department here. I demeaned women, used and abused them, so to speak, to keep them down. I used my physicality to overshadow them, because I knew in my mind they were smarter than me, than all men really. That’s why we’d been downgrading them throughout the centuries. Might makes fucking right, it’s been proven over and over. But here in this realm, we were on even ground. I was the one in the most danger if she ever figured out just how tenuous my hold was.
“Food!” Manny demanded. He didn’t say it—he didn’t have to—I could feel it. ‘Find food or die.’ That was about the nature of it. There was a chance if we waited in the shelter, a weary road traveler would stumble upon it and we could pounce upon him or her like a spider, but that would have to happen pretty damn quickly to appease Manny. He was getting angrier by the minute.
I started rooting around inside Scarlett’s head for some obvious human collection points. She perked up when she realized what I was doing.
“How could you?” she asked in alarm as I stopped at the daycare center where, up until recently, she’d been dropping her kids off.
“It’s easy … they don’t move fast, and they’r
e so tender, almost like veal.”
“No.” She wrenched the thought from me.
“Food now,” Manny forced.
“Hold on, you fucking food black hole.”
Manny growled.
“I need to see what we look like.” I went to a small restroom that was partitioned from the rest of the shelter by a curtain. “Did you enjoy shitting next to everyone? That’s got to be weird. What if you had the runs? Nobody wants to hear that coming out of your asshole, not even the person doing it. I enjoy taking a dump as much as the next guy, but when that watery crap comes running out of your anus, like a gravy train and splashes the shit water onto the back of your ass, oh boy. Really, no one wants to deal with that. Add to that, the stink of liquefied crap, I mean it must have been wretched in here.” Manny stood over the toilet, not moving, just looking at it. “Oh yeah; sorry, I forgot why we were here.”
“You’re disgusting,” Scarlett interjected.
“You have no idea,” I said as I directed Manny over to a small mirror set in the wall. “Wow, you’re a pretty good looking broad. I wouldn’t fuck you, but I could see why your husband would. A little too old for me, and it seems you’re one of them fitness nuts that works out too much. It takes some of the femininity out of women. More angular, like you’re trying to be sculpted or something.”
“It’s called being healthy, you ignorant fuck.”
“So does the carpet match the drapes?” I was directing Manny once again.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” she beseeched.