Parasite

by Patrick Logan

  Only the one in his shoulder seemed to live on.

  Walter kicked one of the small crackers’ chitinous bodies across the hardwood.

  Parasites—all of you.

  Aside from the gaping hole in Sabra’s chest, the man’s perfectly smooth, perfectly bronzed skin was otherwise untouched.

  Skin, so smooth and soft. I might have a use for you yet.

  He thought about his own mottled flesh and how the man had insulted him for it.

  A smile crossed his face.

  Yeah, I think I have a use for your fake-and-bake skin.

  But first things first, he thought, and the first thing for Walter was, and always would be, drugs.

  He hobbled awkwardly to the man’s desk, offering a wide berth around Ben’s body, and immediately grabbed the mirror with the still perfect little mounds of coke. He was about to indulge when he caught a glimpse of Sabra’s massive chair—more of a throne, really—only a couple of feet to his left.

  “Why the fuck not?” he said to the empty room.

  The chair was so heavy that he doubted he would have been able to move it; thankfully, Sabra was so fat that this was unnecessary. Walter could just slide his rail-thin body in between the desk and chair without moving it.

  The first line of cocaine didn’t even so much as burn his nose, let alone get him high. But the cracker in his shoulder noticed; it noticed, and it liked it.

  “Now, Sheriff White, can you tell us a little more about what happened here? What happened in Askergan over the last forty-eight hours?”

  Walter’s eyes shot up at the sound of the word ‘Sheriff’, and then they immediately narrowed at the sight of Sheriff Paul White’s black face.

  “Well, Nancy, as you’ve said already, Askergan was infected by some sort of crab-like parasites. There was a nest”—he gestured to the smoldering ruins behind him—“in the basement of the Wharfburn Estate. We are still totaling the loss and injury due to this, ungh, infestation, and can’t release any more details at this point in the investigation.”

  The burly sheriff then turned toward the camera, his expression suddenly stern—too stern, maybe, like it was an act, like there was a specific image he was trying to portray. Regardless, when he spoke again, it was as if he was speaking directly to Walter.

  “I want to assure the Askergan citizens that we have everything under control. I repeat, everything is now under control. Please stay in your homes. A deputy will be going door to door to answer any of your questions, and to make a list of the missing or lost. Again, I want to stress that the situation has been controlled.”

  Walter wasn’t sure if the cracker in his arm heard or understood what the sheriff was saying, or if it was simply a coincidence, but it pulsated when the sheriff uttered the word ‘control’.

  “We are still—”

  The blonde woman turned and interrupted the sheriff.

  “Do you know what kind of creatures they are? Or where they came from?”

  The sheriff made a face.

  “We are still working out the details, Nancy.”

  Odd. ‘Nancy’. He should have just said, “Please, no more questions at this time”, and walked off. But he hadn’t. He had called her by her first name, and stared at her as if he was angry.

  Something suddenly clicked in Walter’s brain. It was the sheriff’s words and the way he looked at the woman, with soft yet hurt eyes.

  He’s fucking her.

  “And body count? Do we know how many citizens were attacked by these creatures? How many are dead, Sheriff White?”

  Sheriff White’s lower lip curled, and Walter thought he even saw the man cringe.

  “The creatures caused several accidents as well as numerous fires across town. There were deaths, to be sure, and we are very sorry for the victims of this horrible accident. But at this time, we are unable to provide any further details.”

  Nancy, clearly unsatisfied with this response, continued to press despite the fact that the sheriff looked as if he was nearing his wits’ end.

  “There were rumors of a missing boy—”

  The sheriff’s eyes went wide in surprise.

  “Nancy, as I said—”

  Walter started to snort another line, but hesitated; it was like watching reality TV—real reality TV. The asshole sheriff and his fuck toy having a spat on camera.

  “Are the rumors true? Is it true that one missing boy, Tyler Wandry, died here at the Wharfburn Estate?”

  Walter’s entire body started to tingle.

  Tyler!

  There was a long and awkward pause, something that seemed to stretch on and on as Walter gaped, barely able to swallow let alone breath.

  Tyler!

  So much had changed since he had first burst into the police station demanding that his son’s body be retrieved, even though he hadn’t even been sure that he was dead yet.

  Now, however, things were different.

  Walter’s hand instinctively went to the spot where his balls had once been.

  Yes—things were very different.

  “As I said,” the sheriff began slowly, “there were numerous casualties last night, and we are still taking a look at exactly what happened.”

  “And—”

  “I’m sorry, no more questions at this time. Thank you.”

  The sheriff gently pushed the microphone away from his face, and the camera, after lingering for a moment on the big man’s sour expression, moved as well, panning out to get a shot of the smoldering ruins behind them.

  Dead. My only son is dead.

  Walter leaned forward and snorted a line of coke.

  And thanks to Sabra, there is no way I will ever make another.

  He turned back to the image on the television, barely noticing the fact that his shoulder had started to quiver again. His eyes were red, his vision blurry.

  Rage built inside him.

  “I’m coming for you, Sheriff. You killed my son and I’m coming for you.”

  Walter leaned down and snorted the final line on the mirror, and then he tossed it to the floor in disgust.

  “The parasites have not been controlled, you lying prick. I’m coming for you—I’m coming for you and for anyone you care about, starting with that blonde little bitch.”

  Walter spat on the floor.

  When he turned back to the TV, the newscast had gone on to something else, but Walter only saw one thing.

  His bony hands gripped the thick wooden armrests so tightly that they started to crack under his grip.

  He saw the imprint of the sheriff’s face, his big lips, his oddly sorrowful eyes, and he saw the blonde reporter looking up at him.

  “I’m coming for you, Sheriff. I’m coming for you and I’m coming for Askergan.”

  PART II – GRIDDLE

  19.

  “Nancy! What the hell were you thinking?”

  The question didn’t draw an immediate answer. Instead, the woman seemed content in ordering her fat cameraman to get another shot of the burning wreckage before they packed up.

  “Make sure you get a good panorama of the fireman trying to put out the fire. And I want good framing, get it all in the same shot. No chopping off their fucking heads like last time.”

  Paul reached for her arm.

  “Nancy, what were you doing?”

  The woman turned to face him. She had cleaned up amazingly well after what they had experienced, including changing her outfit and doing a half-decent job of at least appearing as if she’d slept last night and hadn’t spent the entire time blowing alien crabs into white smears. But even with makeup, the soot that seemed permanently tattooed on her forehead had been impossible to conceal.

  “I’m getting a shot of the burning house before they put out all the flames,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  Paul shook his head.

  “No, what were you doing? Why did you ask about the Wandry kid? You saw what I saw, Nance. You know about the fucking crackers, the shit that happened at
Wellwood Elementary School, Tyler Wandry, and fucking Mrs. Drew, for Christ’s sake.”

  An image of the woman fleeing from them, drawing the crackers momentarily away before Greg Griddle had shot her in the head, flooded back to him, and an incredible sadness washed over him.

  He forced the tears away.

  “Why do you need me to say it? And on TV, for Christ’s sake!”

  Nancy tried to keep a stern expression, but he could tell that she too was nearing a breaking point.

  “People need to know, Sheriff. They have a right—”

  Paul cut her off. He wasn’t in the mood to buy any of her reporter or newscaster babble.

  “After all you’ve seen, do you really want Askergan to know?”

  Nancy seemed to contemplate this for a moment.

  “Yes—I dunno. Does it matter? I just put the news out there. I told you this”—she gestured to both of them—“was important, but so was this.” This time she indicated the microphone and her cameraman.

  Paul made a face. She was telling the truth, of course; Nancy had made it exceedingly clear that her career was important to her.

  Maybe even the most important thing to her.

  “Still, Nance, this is fucked. What happened here… what happened in Askergan, this isn’t normal. And you and I both know that this is the first time that something of this… nature… has happened here. Do you want to send everyone into a frenzy?”

  Nancy shrugged, and she averted her eyes. It was clear now that she hadn’t meant to put him in the position she had, but that her instincts had taken over.

  “But it’s over, right?” she said softly. “I mean, the things are all gone, right?”

  Paul placed his hand on her chin and raised her eyes to meet his. Her green eyes were soft and bright, despite the gray smudges that peeked through the makeup on her cheeks and forehead. She was scared, he saw.

  Nancy, who less than forty-eight hours ago had been shooting a pistol at crackers in a lemon-yellow dress like some sort of female James Bond, was scared.

  She was one tough bitch, but she still felt.

  I love her, Paul realized at that moment. Despite their mutual agreement, that her work would come first and his own was of paramount importance, he loved her.

  When he spoke again, his voice was soft.

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  They had killed so many crackers, and blown up thousands more.

  But it had been what Coggins had done, Coggins and Greg Griddle, that had really put the nail in the proverbial coffin. Whatever they had done at the expense of Tyler Wandry and Kent Griddle had caused the vast majority of the crackers to just curl up and die.

  Kill the queen—the king—and the hive will die.

  “What the fuck were they, Paul?”

  The sheriff looked around at the upturned cracker corpses that littered the Wharfburn lawn. As he had told Deputy Williams earlier in the day, he had called every bureau he could think of, trying to get an expert out here—looking for soldiers, police, even a goddamn forest ranger—and all he had managed to procure was a fucking pathologist.

  Not even an entomologist, microbiologist, or a fucking crab-ologist.

  In the past—during Dana Drew’s reign—Askergan had been content in doing their own thing, taking care of their own people. After all, Askergan County always was a little different, even before all of this. Shit, they had a sheriff’s department mixed in with the PD. And he, Sheriff Paul Lee White, was the top dog. Still, this was too much for them.

  It was too much for him.

  Paul looked skyward, trying to retain his composure.

  “Sheriff? Sheriff!”

  The urgency of the voice drew Paul’s attention not to Nancy, who had felt his pain and had stepped toward him, slipping a comforting hand around his waist, but to Deputy Williams, who was hurrying toward him.

  The man was waving his arms madly as he ran toward them, while at the same time somehow pointing to the rubble behind him.

  Paul’s gaze followed Williams’ wild gesticulations, eventually landing on a fireman hoisting a body out of the Wharfburn rubble.

  “Paul!”

  He’d known there would be bodies in the house, but the shocked expression on his deputy’s face immediately sent the alarm bells in his head ringing.

  He gently peeled Nancy’s arm from around his waist.

  “Andy? What’s wrong?”

  A horrible thought crept into his head.

  He swallowed hard, and his hand went instinctively to the gun at his hip.

  “Are there more of them?”

  Deputy Williams stumbled, breathing hard. When he looked up, his eyes were not so much scared as surprised.

  “No,” he gasped. “Not more of them. But we found somebody.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow and he took two steps toward the other man.

  Found somebody? You mean found some bodies.

  Interpreting the expression on the sheriff’s face, Williams shook his head back and forth vigorously.

  “No, we found somebody, and they’re alive.”

  20.

  ‘You think he loves you more than me?’

  The boy with the dark hair turned to face his brother.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There was an honesty in the boy’s voice that could not be faked, and it gave them both pause.

  Walter and Donnie Wandry were sitting in the branch of one of the tall oak trees at the back of the property, roughly fifty or so feet from the small farmhouse they called home. It was far enough to be out of earshot and to be out of sight for anyone that might just be casually glancing out the back of the house, but not so far that if their father whistled they wouldn’t hear.

  Not being able to hear when Dad called wouldn’t be a good thing. Indeed, not showing up a few moments after the high-pitched sound would be a very bad thing.

  ‘Was it always like this?’ Donnie asked. He was gently probing the bruising on his cheek as he spoke, as if trying to reaffirm that it was still there.

  Walter shrugged.

  ‘I was three when you were born; I don’t remember much about what happened before then.’

  This was only a half lie; while it was true that he didn’t remember anything specific about his life back then, he remembered how he’d felt.

  He had been happy, and Mom and Dad had been happy, too. Although he was only fourteen, the boy was mature enough to know that life had a strange way of shifting, of memories changing from one moment to the next, and that one could never be completely sure if what they remembered was actually true.

  Still, while memories could be faked, feelings were less easy to manipulate. His life had been happy before Donnie was born, he was sure of it. It just didn’t feel right to say so.

  Not now, anyway.

  ‘I don’t get it. Why does he hate me so much?’

  Tears were beginning to spill from Donnie’s large, dark eyes now, making wet track marks on his face. His nose was getting red, too, and they both knew that it would only be moments before the two of them were racked with sobs.

  ‘He doesn’t hate you.’

  Another lie.

  ‘Then why does he hit me? Why? I’m not any worse than you… I mean, you do bad stuff too, and he never hits you.’

  Walter wrapped his arms around his brother. As predicted, they both started crying, their bodies heaving as they held each other.

  Then a whistle cut through the warm evening air and they immediately disengaged.

  ‘Hurry, help me down. We can’t be late!’

  Less than five minutes later, they were in the kitchen, huffing from running as fast as they could.

  ‘Sit down.’

  Both boys pulled their chairs out from the table and sat down.

  The man in the blue overalls did the same. He wasn’t a particularly big man, and if the boys continued to grow at their current pace, adding three or four years to their already fourteen and eleven, it wouldn�
�t surprise anyone if they outgrew their father. The man was short and thin, but hard, too. Hard in a way that boys, even the mean boys that teased them at school, just couldn’t muster, despite their intentions. He had dark eyes, a small mouth, and thick, knotted hands.

  The boys’ father was hard in a way that extended from his callouses to his heart.

  At least, when it came to one of them.

  The other person at the table had already been seated when they had come in from outside. The boys’ mother was an equally small person to their father, which lent to jokes at school about how the boys resembled the mailman. They were always being picked on, mostly because they spent their evenings mowing the lawn or collecting eggs from emaciated chickens, while the others did normal things like play soccer or go fishing.

  But unlike their father, their mother wasn’t hard. She was, in fact, a sweet person.

  But that wasn’t quite right; that was another one of those little lies again, like the one about their father not hating a favorite punching bag—that he didn’t hate Donnie.

  Their mother was sweet, but only in the past tense sense. For whatever had irked their father when the youngest boy had been born, for whatever had turned his fury on him, it had had the opposite effect on her. Slowly, as the beatings grew more regular, she become more and more abject—indifferent. But like Walter, the thin man with the rough hands never laid them on her, either.

  ‘Say grace.’

  It appeared like an open invitation, that anyone was entitled to chime in with the word of the Lord.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘You, boy,’ the man asserted, his red-rimmed eyes glaring at the boy with the bruised cheek.

  Donnie averted his gaze and clasped his hands together, and the rest of the table followed suit.

  After the prayer, the family ate in silence, the sound of heavy masticating filling the space that would in a normal household have been consumed with conversation—idle chatter about how their days had gone.