Infected

He quickly hopped to the bathroom and stripped his clothes. They were soiled with blood, both wet and flaky-dry. Perry felt the burst of overflow excitement as the Triangles in his back, his arm and in...in... in other places... looked upon the world together for the first time.

There wasn’t time for a full-out shower; a naked sink-was.h.i.+ng would have to suffice. Besides, he didn’t even want to look in the tub and see the floating remnants of the scabs that heralded the start of this waking nightmare.

The last clean washcloth quickly turned pink as he scrubbed the blood from his body. Flakes of dry blood fell into the running water. He turned off the sink, let the washcloth fall to the floor, grabbed a towel and started drying off.

It was at that moment he noticed his shoulder.

Or rather he noticed the mold.

The mold was under the Band-Aids, green gossamer tufts peeking out

past plastic edges. The fine little hairs looked like the last downy strands growing on an old man’s head before baldness finally takes hold.

That’s where the strange smell had been coming from: his shoulder. The musty, rotten scent filled the bathroom. The Band-Aids remained firmly affixed to his wound, but under the strip he saw something else, something black and wet and horrible.

The Band-Aids had to come off. He had to see what was in there. Perry used his fingernails to pull a small corner of Band-Aid off his skin, enough for him to get a good thumb-and-forefinger grip, then slowly tore it off.

The flap of skin peeled back; a gummy ribbon of stagnant black goo ran down his chest, hot at first, and ice cold by the time it had reached his stomach. The smell that had only hinted at its power during the past day was now released, a satanic genie billowing out of a bottle; it filled the bathroom like a cloud of death.

The dead stench instantly made Perry’s stomach turn inside out — he spewed bile into the sink, where some of it mingled with the running water from the tap and headed down the drain. Perry stared at the wound, not even bothering to wipe the vomit

There was more of the viscous muck packed in the wound, like black currant jelly at the bottom of a half-empty jar. The dead Triangle had rotted. Horror stole his breath and made his heart hammer a triple-time beat of desperation.

The consistency resembled a rotten pumpkin a month after Halloween — pasty, runny and decomposing. Green tufts of the same gossamer mold spotted both the wound and the dead Triangle. s.h.i.+ny black rot clung to the mold filaments.

The most disturbing part of the image in the mirror? He wasn’t sure if all the rot came from the dead Triangle’s fork-punctured corpse. Some of the green mold looked as if it grew right out of his skin, like a creeping, crawling messenger of demise.

The sink’s running hot water slowly clouded the mirror. In a daze, Perry wiped the steam clear — and found himself face-to-face with his father.

Jacob Dawsey looked haggard and gray. He had sunken eyes and thin, smiling lips that revealed his big teeth. He looked as he had in the hours before Captain Cancer finally stole him away.

Perry blinked, then fiercely rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them his father still stared back. Somewhere in his brain, Perry knew he was hallucinating, but it didn’t make the experience any less real.

His father spoke.

"You always were a quitter, boy," Jacob Dawsey said, his voice the same thick growl that always preceded a beating. "You get a little b.o.o.boo and now you want to give up? You make me sick."

Perry felt hot tears well in his eyes. He blinked them back — hallucination or no, he wouldn’t cry in front of his father.

"Go away, Daddy. You’re dead."

"Dead and still more of a man than you’ll ever be, boy. Look at you — you want to give up, let ’em win, let ’em put you down."

Perry felt anger surge. "What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do? They’re inside me, Daddy! They’re eatin’ me up from the inside!"

Jacob Dawsey grinned, his thin, emaciated face showing the teeth of a skeleton. "You gonna let ’em do that to you, boy? You gonna let ’em win? Stop acting like a woman and do something about it." The steam steadily clouded the mirror, slowly obscuring Jacob Dawsey’s face. "You hear me, boy? You hear me? You do somethin’ about it!"

The mirror clouded over. Perry wiped at it, but now only his own face stared back. Daddy was right. Daddy had always been right; Perry had been a fool to try and escape what he was. In a violent world, only the strong survive.

Perry took a slow, deep breath, and prepared his mind for what he had to do.

Time to get his game-face on.

THE CALL (PART TWO)

Officer Ed McKinley turned left onto Washtenaw Avenue and headed east toward Ypsilanti. Traffic slowed all around the Ann Arbor police cruiser, just a touch, even for people who traveled at the speed limit. In the pa.s.senger seat, Officer Brian Vanderpine stared out the window, far more alert and attentive than usual.

"Eight dead," Brian said. "Man, that’s a lot."

"That’s the tenth time you’ve said that, Brian," Ed said. "How about you give it a rest?"

"I just can’t get over this. s.h.i.+t like this doesn’t happen in Ann Arbor."

"Well it does now," Ed said. "I’m not surprised, really. We’ve got foreigners from all over the d.a.m.n planet going to school here. And every last one of them thinks America is evil."

"Yeah, we’re evil, but they sure are happy to come here and get an education from us."