by J. S. Volpe
* * *
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kirby asked Blunt as they headed down the length of Ghost Gulch.
Blunt had developed a pronounced limp during the five hours it had taken them to get here from where the machine ran out of energy. At first Kirby had assumed Blunt’s legs were simply sore from all the walking they’d been doing. But then about an hour ago, Blunt started pausing every ten seconds to scratch at his injured leg as if it were covered with fleas.
“I’m fine, Mr. Kirby,” Blunt said. “My leg just hurts a little, is all.”
Kirby gestured at Blunt’s leg, which was now hidden from view behind the spare pair of pants that Blunt had changed into after they climbed down from the machine. “Do you want me to look at it? It’s not infected, is it?”
“No, Mr. Kirby, it’s fine. Just kinda itchy.”
Kirby regarded him closely, trying to decide whether or not to believe him. Finally he threw up his hands and said, “Fine. Whatever. Have it your way.”
Blunt walked on in silence. That had been a close call. The last thing he wanted right now was for Mr. Kirby to see what was really going on with his leg.
Two hours ago he had excused himself to pee in a grove of trees. While he was in there, he pulled down his pants to examine his leg. The moment he saw it, he gasped in horror.
The lumps he had seen earlier had swelled and spread and were taking on the shapes of tiny people that looked and dressed just like Blunt. Worse, new bumps had popped up on his other leg and his torso.
Blunt was ignorant but he wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what was happening to him. Clearly the tiny little screaming things in the woods had been made out of the bodies of normal-sized things, whose appearance they replicated except on a much smaller scale. When the tiny pirate had exploded it had sent little seeds into Blunt’s skin, and the seeds were using Blunt’s own skin and meat to grow little tiny Blunts that would eventually break away from his body and run around screaming in search of new living things to infect.
Blunt didn’t know exactly how long he had left, but he hoped it was long enough for him to help Mr. Kirby get the gold. Then afterward he could just go off somewhere quiet and lonely and kill himself before he turned into a bunch of tiny screaming Blunts.
The thing was, if Mr. Kirby found out what was really going on, he might decide to abandon their quest and instead head off to find a biomage to heal Blunt. And if that happened, someone else would wind up getting the gold.
Darn it, Mr. Kirby deserved that gold more than anybody. Blunt was going to make sure he got it, even if it was the last thing he ever did.
The duo rounded a rock formation, and the end of the gulch came into view—the moraine, the bodies (both old and new), the brown door…
And the Ajin girl just about to open the door.