The Becoming - a novella

by Leverone, Allan

  His old life as he had known it would disappear, but what difference did that make? It was already long gone, anyway. Matt was going to do whatever it took to try and get his little family back, and although he knew tomorrow would likely be one of the worst days of his life—hell, maybe it would even be the last day of his life—he was glad to have at least decided on a plan of action.

  Before he knew what was happening, Matt had slid into a troubled slumber.

  ***

  It was on him.

  Something was on his face.

  Matt’s eyes opened and by the light of the TV screen flickering in the corner of the living room he could see Julie and Tim standing next to the couch, side by side, still as gargoyles, white as the ghosts they had become, their eyes dead and empty.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Those awful things he had seen two nights ago protruded from the mouths of his two family members, tenebrous and ropy and somehow alien. The segmented bodies pulsed and squirmed, they looked like gigantic earthworms, only they were much too big to be earthworms, and oh God they were coming out of Julie’s and Tim’s mouths, and they had clamped onto Matt’s face, one on each side of his head, holding it steady while they pushed and pulled at his lips, trying to force his mouth open so they could infect him, too.

  Matt worked his jaws, clamping his mouth shut, choking off the scream that tried to explode out of him of its own accord. His panicked mind raced, threatening to shut down, but from somewhere came the thought, the knowledge, the certainty, that if he screamed he was dead, it was that simple.

  So he forced his mouth shut and fought for his life, clawing at the disgusting mottled earthworm-things as they squirmed and pushed and pulled, working relentlessly to gain access to a new host. Instead of withdrawing as they had done two nights ago when he awoke and saw them, the things must have been emboldened by their success with Julie and Tim, because they clamped down harder on Matt’s face. They wriggled and squirmed, squeezing until he thought his cheekbones would shatter.

  Matt kicked and clawed, fighting desperately but getting nowhere against the unrelenting brute force of the worm-like creatures. He was tiring rapidly, sickened by the slimy chunks of parasite skin collecting under his fingernails. At least there’ll be evidence for the cops to find, he thought to himself, and that was when he remembered the gun.

  It was under the couch.

  Inches away.

  Waiting to be used.

  And Matt knew it was his only chance.

  Almost beyond rational thought, his head filled with the screams of terror his mouth could not open to unleash, Matt released his left hand from the creature stabbing out of Julie’s open mouth. It immediately redoubled its efforts to wedge its way inside Matt.

  He grabbed for the gun in a panic and slapped it away instead. It skittered a couple of inches farther under the couch on the thick living room rug and stopped. Matt moaned in terror and as he reached for the Glock one more time, one last time, the parasite protruding from Tim seemed to get a flash of inspiration. It wriggled over Matt’s nose, bunching its horrible body up and sliding right over his nostrils, cutting off his air supply.

  Matt pushed against the armrest with his feet, leaning off the couch, extending his hand and feeling for the gun as his grip on the monster began to weaken. He had been panting from exertion and knew he was down to his last few seconds of life. He would open his mouth reflexively to breathe and that would be the end of him. The parasite would thrust into his mouth, sliding into his body, and he would die or even worse he would wish he were dead, becoming just another empty-eyed zombie just like his girlfriend and her son and he would—

  —He felt the gun.

  He wrapped his sweaty hand around it, forcing himself to move deliberately, knowing he would not get another chance. He swung his hand out from under the couch and took aim at the parasitic host nearest him, the thing that used to be Julie, and almost lost his nerve.

  Then one of the worm-things finally managed to force its way between his lips, wriggling and questing, and all conscious thought left him. He fired.

  Julie’s head exploded, the left side of her face disappearing, pulverized by the 9 mm slug. Matt was vaguely aware of a fine crimson mist coloring the air as her body fell and he thought I can’t believe I didn’t miss and then he pivoted his wrist and fired again. The bullet missed Tim’s head but struck the little boy square in the chest, blowing his small body backward, opening a ragged hole in his Spider Man pajama top.

  The worm-like creatures were pulled off Matt’s face as their hosts fell to the floor. He registered a faraway popping sound through the roaring in his ears, as if dozens of suckers were being yanked off the skin of his face. Then he rolled off the couch, his feet scrabbling for purchase as he stumbled toward the hallway, moving without any real purpose other than to get away from the horrible parasitic organisms.

  He reached the hallway at the far end of the living room and turned, half convinced the alien pests would be wriggling across the floor in dogged pursuit. But they were nowhere to be seen. Across the room the bodies of the two people who until forty-eight hours ago had constituted his entire family lay crumpled unmoving on the floor. Most of Julie’s head was missing and Tim’s arms and legs were splayed out unnaturally from the force of his fall. Matt could see blood oozing sluggishly from Tim’s chest wound. There was less blood than he would have expected.

  He began shaking uncontrollably, now certain he was going into shock but not caring. He leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. Matt knew no one in law enforcement would believe his story, he would be arrested and charged with murder, but knew also that once the autopsies on Julie and Tim were completed he would be exonerated.

  It didn’t change the fact, though, that Matt Hardiman had just gunned down the two people closer to him than anyone else in the world. He felt feverish and sick, and before he realized what was happening, he puked, partially digested food and stomach acid spewing out of his mouth onto his legs and onto the floor around them.

  He welcomed the nausea, was thankful for it. One of those wormlike things had succeeded in forcing its way between his lips and maybe by throwing up he could rid himself of its awful taste. He pictured the segmented bodies of the long, thin parasites wriggling and crawling along his skin and knew he would feel their presence forever. He could scrub his face with steel wool and it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. He would feel the slimy trail of their mottled bodies as long as he lived, and in all probability would suffer nightmares about them every night as well. Assuming he ever slept again.

  Sweat rolled down Matt’s face and his stomach twisted and churned and he knew he was going to be sick again. His head hung on his chest and he closed his eyes for just a second. He felt tired, so damned tired.

  And a ropy, slick body slithered up his arm, moving incredibly fast, faster than Matt would have thought possible. It flew up his arm to his neck, its goal obvious, its intent clear. His eyes opened and his stomach emptied again and he dug his heels into the carpet, trying to push away from the parasite, instinctively trying to flee but succeeding only in pressing his body harder into the wall.

  In a flash the thing had wriggled across his face into his open mouth, undeterred by the vomit spraying in the other direction. Only then did Matt remember the Glock. He was still clutching it in his left hand and he lifted the gun but there was nothing to aim it at. The long slimy body of the creature was plastered to his own, wriggling and moving, and it had already entered Matt’s mouth.

  There was nothing to aim at but Matt fired anyway. He became vaguely conscious of a stinging pain in his foot as the slug blew his toes off at the same time the parasite’s head, if it even was a head, found its goal and slid smoothly down Matt’s throat.

  The thing moved quickly and the taste was nowhere near as bad as he had imagined it would be and it kept going, wriggling and squirming, moving steadily into Matt’s mouth and down his throat until in a matter of
a few seconds it had disappeared entirely.

  And Matt knew his problems were over.

  PASKAGANKEE

  By Allan Leverone

  Excerpt

  Prologue

  November 16, 1691

  Stephen Ames shivered in the gathering darkness, a bone-chilling cold seeping into his body as he sat waiting for the girl’s arrival. The wind whispered and moaned through the bare trees as the Great North Woods prepared for winter. The silence was all-encompassing, unrelenting. He wondered if the bronzed young Abnaki woman would come as she had promised and if she would bring the child whose existence he had discovered just yesterday—his child—to meet him for the first time.

  Stephen was a member of a small group of missionaries traveling up and down the eastern seaboard of this strange, wild country; their mission, to convert the native savages to Christianity and thus save their souls. It was a difficult and dangerous life, nearly impossible at times, but also incredibly rewarding when he was able to make a positive impact on the lives of the people he converted.

  It was also a lonely job. The dedicated band of missionaries numbered roughly a dozen; though the exact total was constantly in flux as men joined the group or dropped out, unable to handle the stressful life, difficult travel and unrelenting physical danger. The last time the missionaries passed through this remote area, working with a tribe located in a small village hard by the Penobscot River, he had met a Native girl, roughly his own age of twenty-two, and had taken refuge in her arms from the constant, crushing loneliness.

  That was two years ago. The missionary group spent a couple of months working with the savages and then moved on, converting no one but making what they felt were potential inroads with a small number of the tribe’s more influential members. Unfortunately, the chief, an older savage with a deeply lined face and decades-old battle scars crisscrossing his body, had been unreceptive to the well-intentioned band of young men, eventually dropping all pretense of civility and forcing them to move on under threat of violence.

  Now the men were back in the area, nearing the northernmost portion of their territory, and had decided to pay another visit to the village to see if the situation with the tribe had changed. Perhaps the old chief had died and a new warrior had taken his place, one more receptive to the missionaries’ soul-saving message.

  It was during this visit two days ago that Stephen spotted the Native girl walking through the village and signaled her. She had run to him, recognizing him immediately, and in a curious combination of English, French, and the strange Abnaki native tongue, the two had worked out a time and place to meet the following night. She seemed nervous and anxious, glancing around furtively as if fearful of being observed, and after getting her message across to Stephen, disappeared quickly into the bustle of activity in the village.

  At their meeting last night, Stephen received the shock of his young life when he learned he was the father of a now eighteen-month-old baby girl. The Native woman had become pregnant by him and given birth long after the band of missionaries had been forced to move on. She related to Stephen how she had nearly been sacrificed by the tribal elders when they learned she was with child, but had been spared due to her age and the fact that the baby’s father had left the area, never to return. The child would be raised as a Native in the customs and traditions of the Abnaki.

  Shocked by this development, Stephen knew immediately he could never allow his child to be raised as an Abnaki. The heathen savages refused to permit the introduction of Christianity into the community, and Stephen was well aware of what that meant for his child: suffering in the fires of hell for all eternity. Although he had never met his baby, although he had only known for twenty-four hours that he even had a baby, Stephen realized he must do something to give his little daughter the opportunity to experience eternal salvation.

  So he had begged the Native girl for a chance to meet the infant, to see his child if only once, and she reluctantly agreed. Stephen thought how strange it was to have fathered a baby with a savage girl whose name he didn’t even know. They had tried numerous times two years ago to relate their names to each other, but the language barrier was simply too wide—the savage girl’s name sounded like nothing more than guttural nonsense to Stephen, and he assumed his name sounded the same to her.

  Stephen was surprised the Native girl had agreed to his request, as she was clearly suffering tremendous pressure from the village elders. The savages had never expected to see the band of traveling missionaries again, and the Native girl was obviously worried that either she or her baby would suffer some horrible fate Stephen could not comprehend thanks to their return.

  All the more reason, Stephen thought, to rescue my child from this primitive land, to give her a chance at a real life back in England. His parents would be shocked by the baby’s arrival, but he knew they could provide proper care for her until Stephen could return home following his missionary calling and raise her himself.

  Now, the night of the promised meeting, Stephen sat perched on a mammoth boulder, body heat leaching away in the freezing cold of the Great Forest. He feared the young mother had changed her mind about allowing him to see his baby. Perhaps the elders had somehow learned of the meeting and were even now holding her captive, forbidding her to leave the village. He hoped not; it would make a bad situation that much worse.

  But at last the girl padded silently down the narrow hunting path. On her back a sling made of thick animal fur had been fastened and buried deep inside it, swaddled in still more fur to ensure warmth, was Stephen’s child. The baby was fast asleep, and the Native girl was reluctant because of the cold to lift her out of the sling, but Stephen glimpsed her luxurious head of jet-black hair peeking through the top of all the fur. Her hair was thick and full and had a sheen and color identical to that of the Native girl.

  The Native girl’s entire body was shaking but not due to the temperature. If there was one thing the missionaries had learned about the savages in this strange land, it was that they knew how to keep warm in the winter. They survived in this harsh and unforgiving climate by utilizing skills perfected over the course of centuries to overcome the frigid winter temperatures. No, this was something else—the girl was clearly terrified. Stephen was glad he had decided to rescue his child from the clutches of these savages; it seemed obvious to him that something was very wrong.

  As he admired the baby—or at least the top of her head—the remainder of the close-knit band of traveling missionaries appeared, stepping out from behind trees, bushes and rocks and surrounding Stephen and the Native girl. He watched tensely as she turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, looking from face to face in terror, understanding instantly she had been tricked, that this late-night meeting was not going to go as planned.

  Stephen hated having to ambush the frightened Native girl like this, but he could think of no other way to wrest his baby away from clutches of the Abnaki savages. After meeting the girl in this isolated location last night—a good two miles from her village and at least another mile from the missionaries’ camp—and discovering that he was a father, he had requested council with the rest of the group.

  The men had been unanimously shocked by Stephen Ames’s admission of having lain with the savage two years ago, but they quickly agreed that action must be taken to remove the innocent child from the heathens, that she be provided the opportunity to grow to adulthood in civilized society. In a strategy session lasting deep into the night, a plan had been hastily devised. Stephen would meet the Native girl as agreed, and the remainder of the missionaries would show themselves upon her arrival. The resulting show of force, they reasoned, should be sufficient to intimidate the frightened girl into handing over the baby.

  After that meeting had broken up, however, Stephen had learned from his closest friend that the missionary leaders convened a second session, one to which Stephen Ames had not been invited. They suspected separating the child from her mother might not be so easy and knew
they might require a second, more forceful plan, to be utilized in the event the young savage resisted. That was all the information Stephen had been able to pry out of his associate but was more than enough to cause him grave concern.

  Now, as Stephen watched with his heart in his throat, the young girl turned on her heel and began hurrying as quickly as she was able with a sleeping baby on her back down the narrow hunting path. She found her passage blocked almost immediately by two of the missionaries. They approached her with their hands held out, palms up, in identical gestures of supplication, speaking to her calmly, telling her she had nothing to fear. Stephen knew she did not understand and could see things were spiraling quickly out of control.

  He rushed up from behind, hoping to avert disaster, but as he did the rest of the group closed in on her as well and now she had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. The young mother tried to shoulder her way past the man nearest her as Stephen reached for her elbow and missed. The missionary shoved her roughly, and she tumbled into the forest ringing the path. Stephen shouted and the man grabbed for the baby and that was when all hell broke loose.

  ***

  Abnaki war cries pierced the air as savages seemingly materialized out of nowhere, rushing to protect their tribal member. They moved quickly and within seconds had fully surrounded the missionaries. One warrior struck the man who had pushed the girl, hitting him in the face with his fist. Blood spurted and bone cracked and the man fell to the ground with an anguished cry.

  This seemed to panic the missionaries, and one of them pulled a strange-looking silver cylindrical device from the pocket of his long overcoat, pointing it at the Abnaki warrior who had rushed to the girl’s defense. Fire erupted from the end of the cylinder and a frighteningly loud boom shook the woods as the side of the warrior’s face disappeared in a pink and grey stew of blood, bone and tissue. The warrior dropped to the ground and lay still.