“Don’t know. But they went to Askergan first.”
Sabra nodded, his chins wobbling.
“Turn on the TV, Dirk—go to the news. And Ben, strip off the rest of this filthy bastard’s clothes.”
Dirk moved quickly around both Ben and Walter, picking up the remote and turning on the large TV mounted off to the side of Sabra’s ornate desk. Ben, on the other hand, so eager to please Sabra just a few moments ago, was no longer so obsequious. The man’s dark, beady eyes were staring at the network of vessels that crisscrossed Walter’s chest, veins so thick that they stood out from his pasty flesh. When his eyes met the cracker’s oscillating teeth in his shoulder, he paused completely.
“Ben! Take the fucker’s pants off, now!” Sabra’s voice, nearly musical when he had been sitting behind his giant desk, was now loud enough to make Walter’s ears ring.
Ben finally set to motion, but he was still hesitant, making sure to stay on Walter’s left side, his eyes locked on the cracker even as he yanked down Walter’s jeans and then his crusty underwear.
“There has been a—a—an infestation of sorts in Askergan County,” a female voice suddenly flooded the room. “The county was overrun by some sort of—ugh, ugh—crabs.”
Walter glanced at the TV and caught a brief glimpse of a blonde woman, pretty even with dirt and soot smeared across her forehead, before the camera cut away to a shot of the smoldering gas station, and Highway 2, littered with the white, upturned corpses of the crackers.
“It seems as if the infestation of these parasites originated in Askergan…”
Sabra looked away from TV and turned back to face Walter, a look of sheer disgust on his face.
“Looks like you spent a little time in Askergan, didn’t you, Walt?”
Walter shifted his hips, swinging his naked cock at the fat man. Ben grunted and moved further away. He looked like he might be sick.
Sabra laughed.
“Funny guy, I like that—I like funny people.” Then he turned to Ben, who had risen from his feet after stripping Walter. “Grab the chandelier, Ben.”
The man with the bushy mustache swallowed hard.
“Sab, I ain’t—”
Sabra pushed his thick lips together so tightly that they became wrinkled.
The fat man’s words echoed in Walter’s head.
I could pop your balls like grapes.
Standing there naked, he watched as Ben finally pulled the chandelier all the way down from the ceiling. The chain clanked noisily as it piled onto itself, and when Ben grabbed a fistful of the chain and walked behind him and the metal chair, Walter figured that that was enough.
It was time.
Go now. Go now, and take them out.
Nothing happened.
Ben dropped to his knees, and Walter saw that the length of chain now went from the chandelier on the floor in front of him, to around and behind him where it was clutched in the mustached man’s fists. The other end of the chain, looped through the chandelier and extended high above them, didn’t seem to be affixed to the ceiling as he had first thought, but appeared to be attached to some sort of winch mechanism.
Go now! Go!
This time, something happened, but it was far from the excruciating pain he’d expected from stretching skin. The pressure in his biceps and triceps increased, a similar feeling to what he had felt before the crackers had budded and attacked Sherk and Barney. But instead of growing in intensity, as his brown gritted teeth could attest to in anticipation, it seemed to quell and then subside.
What the fuck? Go, you fucking crab motherfuckers! Go forth! Get this fat man and his biker friends!
“Jesus fucking Christ, you ever even wipe your ass?” Ben muttered. Walter had forgotten that the man was behind him, crouching between his legs. When he felt the cold chain touch the back of his scrotum, he had an involuntary intake of breath.
“Dirk! Point your gun at him. If he moves, shoot him.”
I could pop your balls like grapes… but I’m no savage. I’m a creative man.
Dirk’s face had turned an ashen shade that matched his mustache and hair, but he held the gun out in front of him as instructed.
Get the fuck out! Get out, you goddamn parasites!
Walter barely resisted moving when the chain was wrapped around his ball sack and then was pulled tight behind him, through his legs. He felt his balls trying to resist, to suck back up into his abdomen, but the way that Ben had looped the chain—how did he do that? The chain links were so thick—they were locked in place.
Walter felt panic begin to set in.
“I’m going to fucking burn my hands,” Ben grumbled as he stood.
“You see, Walter,” Sabra began, his massive face transforming to a smile. “There are things in this world that you just don’t do.”
The fat man with his tits hanging out of his silk robe reached over and pressed the button on his desk again, and the crank on the ceiling started to whir. The chain began to suck back into the ceiling, one link at a time. Looking at the loose coils on the floor and gauging the rate that the chain was moving, Walter figured he had two, maybe three minutes before his balls were ripped through his asshole. For once, Sabra’s flair for the dramatic—in this case, using an extremely slow motor to raise and lower the chandelier, presumably to make the person sitting in the bolted chair squirm—was going to work in Walter’s favor.
His gaze left the chain and traveled to his biceps. He could barely make out the outline of a crab shell, but it wasn’t raised as the others had been. Instead, it was just a dark smudge.
“You don’t sleep with your sister,” Sabra continued. “That’s a no-no. And you don’t eat on the can—even I know that.”
The man’s face turned hard, all of the doughiness seeming to somehow vanish.
“And you don’t fuck—with—Sabra.”
With the final word, Walter looked up.
“You—” he said, struggling to get the word out. Even though the chain was far from taut, it was heavy, and he could feel his scrotum stretching to impossible limits. This Sabra was one sick fucker.
“—don’t fuck with the parasite.”
He spat blood onto the carpet.
And then it happened.
16.
Sabra stumbled backward when the first scream erupted from Walter’s mouth, his large hips bumping into the heavy desk. Any normal table would have toppled from his massive girth, but this table was up to the challenge and stood fast.
Judging by the expression on the fat man’s face, it appeared that he would have liked it to do just that, if nothing else but to put some space between himself and Walter.
“What the fuck!” Sabra managed to blubber. His back against the table now, he was so confused and distracted that he was trying to hoist himself on top of it, over it, instead of just going around it.
Walter shut his eyes, his lids fluttering wildly. The pain was intense; regardless of his previous injuries—being shot, punched, having his scrotum stretched—there wasn’t anything to prepare him for this.
It was as if his entire body had been set alight.
He spread his arms wide, for no other reason than he thought it might somehow cool himself, or… or something. It just felt strangely natural.
The veins in his chest—thick, corrugated ribbons of blue and red and purple—pulsated, and the cracker in his shoulder clenched down hard on something deep inside him.
And then there was the stretching, the tearing sensation that originated from his left bicep and below his ribcage at the same time. After a moment, however, the feelings became decentralized, and pain radiated throughout his entire body without a recognizable source.
With every eyelid twitch, his vision went from intermittent rays of yellow light to narrowing darkness.
Emptiness.
Death.
Go forth, he pleaded for what felt like the tenth time, knowing that if the newly born crackers didn’t bud soon, he would pass out.
And then he had no idea what would occur.
“Fucking Christ! What is happening to him?!”
He thought it was Sabra’s voice again, but now someone else was shouting too—Ben, maybe? It all sounded so far away that it wasn’t possible for him to discern who was yelling.
“Just fucking shoot him!”
There was a moment of clarity right after Walter’s pain reached a climax, and then the pressure in his arm and stomach relented with two consecutive wet pops, and he let out a sigh reminiscent of his first orgasm.
A shot rang out in Sabra’s office and he felt something strike him in the calf.
The feeling barely registered.
“Unghhhh,” he moaned, the sound rolling off his tongue.
“Fuck, Dirk! Shoot the fucking things! Shoot them!”
More gunshots rang out, but this time he didn’t feel them plunk against him. Instead, they hit somewhere around his feet, making loud thock noises as the bullets embedded themselves in the hardwood floor.
“Fucking shoot them!”
And then the guttural cries started and Walter finally opened his eyes.
17.
Ben was standing two feet to Walter’s right, tearing desperately at his jean vest, scratching at his chest as if he had been attacked by a swarm of bees. The man’s normally tiny eyes were wide, the lids red.
“Get it off me!” he bellowed. “Get it the fuck off me!”
Walter saw movement beneath his shirt and knew that one of the crackers had reached him and had maybe crawled up the leg of his pants like it had done with Sherk.
“Get it the fuck—”
But then the movement beneath the man’s shirt stopped as the cracker clamped down. Ben bent over as if he had been punched in the stomach, his mouth extending into a capital ‘O’ shape.
“Jesus, fuck!”
Sabra, now… the man still had his back against the desk, his silk robe having come completely undone, revealing not only his bronzed belly, but also what looked like a pink thong.
I’m going to enjoy watching you eaten from the inside out, you fat bastard.
He watched the translucent cracker pause on the floor halfway between himself and Sabra.
The man’s big eyes were locked on it.
Dirk squeezed off another round, but the cracker lifted three of its legs and the bullet missed.
“Dirk!” Sabra shouted. He shifted his body to one side, as if feigning to run in that direction, but the cracker followed him by leaning that way. “Dirk! Shout the fucking thing!”
Walter wanted to watch this, needed to watch it, but he suddenly became aware of a change in the lighting in the room.
He glanced around and saw that the chandelier had started to drag across the floor.
Then he felt the tightness in his groin and looked down.
The first thing he noticed was the thick veins in his chest; they looked darker, thicker, had more relief to them now. There was also blood on his left biceps, thin streams of it that traced lines all the way down his outstretched arm to his armpit. And there were more of those white patches as well on his biceps and on his stomach, where the skin had rapidly healed after the crackers had budded.
Finally, there was the bullet hole in his calf, but this had regressed to a mere sting, and Walter expected that it would be completely healed in a few minutes.
But his balls, on the other hand, were another matter. The chain that Ben had wrapped around them held fast, and a quick glance upward revealed that it would only be moments before it became completely taut. And after that, well… Walter didn’t want to think about that.
Dirk squeezed off one more shot, aiming the round at the cracker, but when he missed, the man simply bolted from the room, offering none of the other men so much as a second glance.
“Dirk! What the fuck!” Sabra shouted.
The man made a move as if to run—or shamble—after Dirk, but before he took a step, the cracker seized this opportunity and lunged. It flew through the air with amazing speed and purpose, landing directly on Sabra’s massive bronzed belly.
“No!” he screamed. His pudgy hands went to his stomach, and tried to swat the cracker away like a large spider.
But this cracker wasn’t having any of it. Its oscillating teeth clamped down immediately and it started to dissect its way beneath the man’s skin with unprecedented fervor.
Sabra howled something unintelligible.
A heavy sound came from Walter’s right, drawing his attention.
Ben had collapsed to the floor, his eyes completely rolled back in his head, froth at the corners of his mouth, coating the edges of his black mustache.
The other cracker had gotten to him.
There was a tearing sound, and then Ben’s body arched. A second later, his chest was torn open, blood soaking his t-shirt and then his jean vest. There was a flurry of movement beneath the wet material, like hands trying desperately to escape from muddy earth, but this quickly faded away, coinciding with Ben’s lifeless body collapsing to the hardwood.
Sabra, who had started to sweat and go red from the exertion of trying to pull the cracker from his burgeoning gut, was wheezing now, the effort taking a toll on his giant heart.
For some reason, amidst the pain that was now encompassing his entire lower half, Walter thought of the white patches of skin as he stared at Sabra.
Such smooth skin. So perfect, so brown and even. I could use your skin, you—
Then Walter felt something between his legs tear and his world faded to black.
18.
A woman’s voice… soft, sweet, but direct.
Why is there a woman in here?
Walter opened his eyes, and was surprised that the light in the room had gone back to the way it had been before the chandelier had been lowered.
Which meant…
Walter gasped and unfurled his body from the fetal position, reaching down between his legs tentatively, his fingers gently prodding the area like the crown of a baby’s head.
The surface was wet and tacky with blood, but thankfully he found no sign of an open wound.
Had the chain broken?
His eyes flicked upward, and he cringed at the sight of blood and gore hanging from the chandelier chain.
“In a few moments, we will have the sheriff of Askergan County on to tell us a little more,” the woman on the news droned on, “but it appears as if this house—what residents refer to as the Wharfburn Estate, even though both Mr. and Mrs. Wharfburn have been deceased for nearly a decade—this once palatial and yet now burning ruin of an estate was the source of the infestation. Authorities say…”
Walter looked away from the television and returned his attention to his own body.
Nude, he lay in a pile of blood—his own, or maybe that of the two other dead men in the room. He had no idea how much time had passed, but assumed that it couldn’t have been long—an hour, maybe, or two. If the news on the TV was indeed live, then the woman was standing in morning dusk—two hours, tops. And then there were the gunshots. Although he doubted that the sound would have made it to the bikers outside, Dirk most likely had. And even if the man had simply ducked his head and fled without addressing any of them, like he had done in this room, just seeing him in such a sense of panic would have likely inspired a visit to Sabra.
Sabra.
But before searching for the big man, Walter ran his fingers over his left bicep. It was smooth there, smooth and white, just like the other spots on his body that the crackers had erupted from. Just like…
His hand went back to between his legs, his breathing becoming shallow.
Smooth.
At first he’d thought that his fingers had found his scrotum, and relief had brushed over him. The skin was smooth and soft… but a quick second of probing and he realized that it was too soft.
His testicles were gone, ripped from his body by the chandelier chain.
Walter stopped breathing entirely.
Neutered.
He had been neutered like a fucking mutt.
A shudder ran through him.
Walter closed his eyes and spread himself out on the carpet, arms wide.
What the fuck is happening to me?
Time seemed to stop, and Walter considered, seriously considered, that he was in fact dead—that what he had experienced today was the hell that he was going to have to endure for eternity.
And if it wasn’t? Then he could just press the button beneath Sabra’s desk, only this time he would wrap the chain around his neck and not his balls.
But then the cracker in his shoulder quivered, bringing him back to reality—whatever reality it was.
Why end it now? Why now, after you have been given such power?
Walter forced his self-pity away, his thoughts briefly turning to his son’s scarred face.
Whatever hell this is, you earned it.
Walter groaned and pulled himself to his feet. He was still sore, but he suspected that, like his broken nose and two gunshot wounds, the cracker would deal with this new pain soon, no matter how cringe-worthy.
Walter walked slowly over to Sabra’s fallen body. The man’s ribcage was blown wide, revealing blankets of thick yellow fat covering his organs—his heart, his lungs, his liver—like bubble wrap. He stood over the body for a moment, staring at it.
Again he was struck by the crackers’ strange behavior—this wasn’t at all what he had seen throughout Askergan.
They’re evolving somehow… that must be it. Somehow the drugs are causing them to change.
Some of the crackers that had erupted within his chest were still in the cavity, their translucent bodies covered in blood, while others had escaped the man’s massive chest only to die after straying too far from their host.
These were a completely different animal than what he had seen littering Highway 2, and before that in the sheriff’s office before he had forced his way out the window. These were different, and somehow the drugs coursing through his system seemed to keep them—or, more specifically, one of them—alive. The others, for whatever reason, were not so lucky. They didn’t even seem capable of surviving in Sabra’s body, the gigantic incubator that was no doubt also flush with drugs.
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