Parasite (6 page)

Walter’s Shoulder Pulsated, And
then the skin started to stretch. Although he couldn’t place exactly where this stretching sensation originated, it seemed to be somewhere on his left side, and not the right where the cracker was buried. It felt like there was something buried beneath his skin, something hell-bent on trying to force his insides out.

“Oh my god.” He heard the words again, but this time he wasn’t sure if he was saying them, or if they had come from the blond goon that had slumped back into the chair, eyes wide in horror.

Whimpering, Walter could no longer resist the urge to look down at his sweat-soaked chest, even though every fiber of his being was telling him to keep his eyes closed, to wait for this moment to pass, to wait for whatever was going to happen to occur in blissful ignorance.

To die in relative peace.

But he couldn’t resist; he just
had
to see.

Nearly immediately, he wished he hadn’t looked.

With his arms still bound by the telephone cable behind his back, the cracker on his right shoulder was even more prominent, the thing’s thick legs jutting up a few inches from the rest of his skin, the razor-like teeth in its mouth oscillating with increased fervor.

But this wasn’t what made his breath catch. That honor was bestowed upon the half dozen or so thick red striations—stretch-marks, maybe, or blood vessels—splaying from the outline of the cracker shell and traveling across his chest, making it to his sternum before receding somewhere deep inside.

These vessels—if indeed that was what they were—were thick, like horrible varicose veins, twisting and turning in tight loops as they meandered their way across and protruded from his pasty white chest.

But despite these obvious marks, it was clear to him that they were not the source of his pain. No, it was now his
other
shoulder that was causing white-hot daggers to shoot throughout his entire left side.

Walter slowly turned his neck to that side and glanced at his shoulder.

There was another cracker embedded there, a smaller one, not quite half of the size of the one that had crawled up his hand on Main Street before latching on to his shoulder.

Where did that come from?
he wondered absently. His entire world had started to quake, and he was suddenly overcome by a bout of dizziness.

He tried his best to keep his eyes on this new cracker as it became more prominent, and then started to push against his skin from the inside, puckering, stretching,
probing
like a chick trying to hatch.

“Ungggh,” Walter moaned as he lost complete control of his body. His head rolled back, and his eyes followed suit.

The cracker suddenly extended its six legs, tearing small fissures in Walter’s shoulder. When it pushed against his skin once more, it budded and then tore through Walter’s skin, sending his body into another tremor.

“Oh god,” he whimpered, his body thrashing against the chair, its four legs tapping repeatedly against the ground with an almost rhythmic quality.

This time when Walter shuddered, it wasn’t in pain; rather, it was sheer, unaltered relief, as the pressure from his stretching skin had finally released.

Walter felt his consciousness begin to fade, but he forced the gray away and regained focus, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before he passed out.

The man with the blond hair stared at Walter, his square features frozen in horror as the bloody cracker trailing tendrils of pink skin climbed clumsily down Walter’s arm.

“What is this?” the man cried, leaning back in his chair. “You’re fucking infected! With—with—with
parasites
!”

The man went to stand when the cracker made its way onto Walter’s lap, its movements becoming more coordinated, its limbs articulating in a more rhythmic sequence.

Lip curling, the man tilted his head and craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the pale creature that perched on Walter’s lap.

“What the fuck is that?” the man whispered. He raised his gun, intent on prodding the creature that hissed rhythmically, the tiny holes on its back fluttering.

“Sherk? I think you should—”

The cracker suddenly flung itself at the man, landing against his leather coat.

“Fuck!” he yelled as he swatted it to the parquet floor with the back of his hand. He jumped to his feet, toppling the chair behind him in the process.

The cracker landed on its back, but then quickly flipped over. As Walter watched, the cracker closed the distance between it and the hitman in seconds, moving so quickly that it was already up the man’s pant leg before he could react.

“Fuck!” he yelled. “Sherk! Sherk! Get the fuck over here!”

The man began shaking his leg furiously, trying to rid himself of the creature. When it quickly became clear that the cracker would not be swatted away like a pesky spider, he switched to trying to smash it through his pants, first with his thick fist, then with the butt of his gun.

But despite his best efforts, the thing kept on moving upward—Walter could see the disc-like outline at the man’s calf, nearing his knee.

The hitman abandoned attempts to crush the thing, and instead turned his attention to undoing his belt while he hopped up and down like a lunatic.

“What the fuck is this? Walter, what the
fuck
is this?”

A small smile spread across Walter’s thin lips. As the pain in his shoulder—both shoulders, now—strangely began to subside, he was reminded of the numbness in his leg, of the fact that the half undressed man with the square head and equally square body before him had shot him.

Serves you fucking right.

He had no idea what the cracker was going to do, if anything, but he hoped that in the very least it would clamp down on the man’s balls.

Only now did Walter risk a glance at the arm from which the new cracker had budded.

There were thick lines of blood on his elbow and the part of his forearm that he could see before it receded behind him, still bound with the telephone cable. And there was blood on his shoulder, too, but what there wasn’t was a tattered hole in his flesh from where the small, almost translucent cracker had burst forth.

There was only a patch of pale white skin, a milky membrane that looked even more sickly than Walter’s normal pallor—as if the skin that the cracker had budded from had already healed over.

What the hell?

Before he could contemplate this any further, the man with the short blond hair screamed, drawing Walter’s attention back.

The man’s pants had gotten stuck around mid-thigh. Walter could see the cracker—which was translucent bordering on transparent, and much smaller than the crackers he had encountered on Highway 2 outside of the burning shithole that was Askergan—suddenly clamp down on the man’s quad. 

The man threw his head back and howled.

Sherk finally came into view, running in front of Walter’s now teetering chair, a black leather bag clutched in one hand, a pistol in the other.

No!

During all of the commotion, the man must have found Walter’s drug case in his fridge—which is presumably why he didn’t come to his colleague’s aid right away.

No! Put it back, you fucking cunt!

The blond-haired man was grabbing at the cracker on his quad with both heads, trying desperately to pry it off. Cords stood out from his neck, and the man’s face was starting to turn a beet red.

The second hitman, the man named Sherk, dropped to one knee in front of his partner. To Walter’s delight, he tossed the black case to one side and then he too tried to pull the cracker off.

From behind, it looked like the shorter, dark-haired man was going to town on the bigger man, sucking his dick, and Walter imagined for a moment that the man’s agonizing cries were actually born of ecstasy.

The bizarre scene almost drove him to laughter.

Then, as if the man had climaxed, he toppled, another howl filling the small, decrepit apartment. For a brief moment, Walter wondered if someone might come running in to help or if someone would call the police.

But he doubted it.

Not in this place.

Walter suddenly felt the tightening sensation again, only this time it was coming from slightly higher than where the other cracker had ruptured from, near the thin skin between his neck and shoulder.

The pain came next, the excruciating sensation of something forcing itself out of his skin. As before, his eyes rolled back, but he bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could, tasting more blood. It would do no good to pass out now.

Besides, he wanted—he
needed
—to see this.

Sherk had managed to remove the blond-haired man’s leather jacket and had pulled his pants all the way down now. But the cracker had already torn a hole in the man’s leg and had embedded itself beneath his skin; a small, apple-sized outline like a second kneecap. The man, flat on his back now, was shrieking in pain, his meaty hands grabbing at the shape, and all the while Sherk kept pushing his hands away. The man reached into the back of his pants and pulled out a thick black handle. As he moved the handle in front of him, he flicked a switch and a gleaming six-inch blade popped out.

The pain on Walter’s shoulder got so intense that he had no choice but to close his eyes. The new cracker embedded beneath his skin would bud at any moment now, and Walter knew that when it did, it would offer him relief… sweet, sweet relief.

As the pain reached a climax, Walter forced his tearing eyes back open for one final glance.

Sherk was still poised to drive the blade into the man’s leg, but as he reared back, the blond man stopped grabbing at his thigh and instead began clutching at his chest.

“
Get it out!
” the man roared in a guttural tone. “Get it out!” he yelled again, only this time the words were garbled and difficult to make out.

Froth began to build at the corners of the man’s mouth, and his eyes suddenly rolled back as he fell into a seizure. The contrast in reactions, from the frantic, yet purposeful pulling at his quad to his sudden lack of control of his limbs and neck, was so polarized that Sherk froze, the knife held in midair.

Another few seconds of staring, and Walter realized that not only was the man’s entire body shaking, but that his skin was also quaking—roiling, as it were. All of his exposed flesh, his arms, legs, face, and now exposed belly, was undulating like a rippling pond.

Sherk lowered the blade and scrambled from his knees back onto one foot, and when the massive, muscular blond man suddenly stopped shaking and his back arched as if being gripped by tetanus, he quickly stood and took a weary step backward.

Without so much as a gasp, the blond man’s chest suddenly exploded, the skin tearing first, followed by his cotton t-shirt in at least a dozen spots at once. From the gaping wound rushed at least a hundred of the plum-sized, nearly transparent crackers.

Walter could see directly into the man’s chest; his ribcage had been torn wide like a mortician’s cornucopia. There was less blood than he would have thought, just enough to pool inside the cavity, the red line slowly rising until it covered his pink lungs. The crackers climbed off the corpse, but stopped moving once their pointed legs touched the bloodstained parquet. They were silent, poised, attentive—it was as if they were awaiting further instruction.

Walter turned back to the blond hitman. He could clearly make out the man’s heart inside his open chest. As he watched, the slimy red organ took one beat, then another, then began twitching madly.

A second later, it stopped completely.

Walter had never witnessed a man die before, and he thought it would have affected him more.

It didn’t.

Serves you fucking right.

Sherk took three quick steps backward, and on the fourth he bumped into Walter’s leg. The stocky man whipped around, crouching into a poised position as he did, making Walter think that the man still held a gun in his hand.

But it wasn’t in his hand; the gun was on the floor beside the black leather drug case. Instead, he was holding the knife.

It looked pathetic, like a tiny child’s knife clutched between chubby fingers—if the gun hadn’t killed him, then what harm could a puny knife do?

Besides, what
he
had was so much more…
powerful.

Walter smiled, blood from the wound on his tongue and the inside of his cheek throbbing, blood that stained his teeth a dark red, a subtle contrast from their usual brown.

A quick glance revealed that the translucent cracker that had emerged from his shoulder remained perched there.

And then it cracked once, instantly drawing Sherk’s horrified gaze.

“Go,” Walter instructed, his smile widening. “Go get this fucker.”

The man tried to scream, but his voice box had been ripped from him years ago.

In less than a minute, his skin would be torn from him as well.