Parasite

by Patrick Logan

He almost made it. In spite of everything, he almost made it to his gun. But the biker was no stranger to this sort of thing, and he stepped forward and planted his own shove right between Nancy’s breasts. This time she flew backward, and her head slammed against the wooden bed frame. Paul saw her eyes roll back as her body collapsed into a motionless heap.

  The biker took advantage of the distraction and jumped toward Paul, switching his grip on the gun to the barrel. Reaching down, he swung the butt in a wide arc, connecting with a solid thunk with the top of Paul’s head. Stars erupted, turning his sight of his pants and gun belt into a galactic cornucopia. Still, despite his failing strength and equally tenuous consciousness, the sheriff continued to reach for his gun, knowing that if he could only grab it...

  His vision started to tunnel, and the sheriff he tried to shout out the word ‘no’.

  Only garbled sounds came out of his mouth.

  The last thing he saw before Paul lost consciousness was the biker’s tattooed head and face as he squatted and leaned in close.

  “The Crab has plans for you yet, Sheriff. This ain’t over.”

  And then darkness came early.

  46.

  There was so much blood on Seth’s hands that he couldn’t see the pink color of his flesh peeking through. He tried his best to wipe the offending substance on his jean, but it was no use.

  There was just too much of it.

  Once the name had come to him—Alice Dehaust—it had been easy to find out which room she was in. In fact, her file had oddly been on the desk, right beside the dead woman’s John Milton novel.

  Room 156.

  Seth also found a letter opener beside Alice’s file. Like the pen that he had used to kill the woman, the opener was old-fashioned, with a sort of embossed hilt, like a mini sword.

  He slipped it into his pocket and quickly left the woman in a sticky pile of her own blood, making his way to Alice Dehaust in room 230.

  Get the girl.

  Seth wasn’t sure if these were his words or those of the voice. Everything had melded together since he’d plunged the pen in the woman’s soft neck.

  The entire facility was deathly quiet, and all the doors were closed, as if the tenants had somehow clued into what was going on and were tucked away safely in their beds.

  The door to room 230 was also closed, and Seth stood outside for a moment, debating his options. Although the woman’s name had finally come to him, whispered inside his head, he still wasn’t sure what to expect when that door opened.

  After thirty seconds of deliberation, he decided against knocking, and instead tried the handle. It was unlocked, and Seth pushed the door open a crack, half expecting someone to shout at him.

  But again, nothing happened.

  Encouraged by the silence, he pushed the door open even further.

  And then he blew it wide.

  Seth wasn’t sure what to expect, but what he had in mind definitely wasn’t the scene before him. The first thing that struck him was that there were two people in the room and not one. There was a woman on the bed, a pale-faced lady in her mid-thirties, Seth guessed—the girl. She was thin bordering on gaunt, with black hair pulled away from her face. There was a myriad of cables coming from beneath a thin blanket and hooked up to what various medical devices. An IV drip was connected to her arm.

  Seth quickly glanced to the other person in the room. A man with a cropped red beard and slicked-back hair sat asleep in a chair, arms crossed over his chest. It took Seth a moment to see the slow rise and fall of his chest, to confirm that he was actually alive. The room smelled mildly of campfire.

  Never said anything about a man.

  He stood in the doorway and again mulled his options.

  Eventually his hand found its way into his pocket and wrapped around the cold steel letter opener.

  He tilted his head to the side, his eyes flicking from the girl to the man in the chair.

  Get the girl.

  The voice said nothing about the man.

  He debated killing him, driving the letter opener into his throat, dragging it across, making a ragged, bloody smile in his neck.

  But he wasn’t a killer, despite what had happened at the front desk.

  After all, that hadn’t been him—that had been the voice.

  Seth glanced at the girl. Like the man’s breathing, hers too was deep and heavy. Something told him that with all of the wires coming out from under the blanket, she wasn’t going to wake up any time soon.

  Making up his mind to avoid the man entirely—stealth was key—Seth let go of the letter opener and crept completely into the room, leaving the door open behind him. As he made his way over to the woman in the bed, he realized that all of the cords coming from her were going to pose a problem.

  He had no idea how to remove them, or if removing them would cause the woman to wake up. And if his medical knowledge gleaned from television and movies was in any way accurate, he could expect a myriad of beeps and alarms to sound as soon as he pulled out the first cable. And unlike the woman, he doubted that the man would remain asleep.

  Get the girl. You are chosen.

  “Fuck,” he whispered in frustration.

  He was at the foot of her bed now, and his eyes glanced quickly from Alice’s flaccid face to the man’s. Indecision gripped him like a cold, and he stood, frozen, unable to act.

  But then the man’s face twitched and a sigh escaped his lips. This scared Seth, and he was finally forced to act. He withdrew the letter opener and took two aggressive steps to his left, toward the sleeping man.

  Killer or not, he had to get the girl.

  Get the girl get the GIRL GET THE GIRL.

  Despite his previous apprehension, he intended to slam the blade into the man’s neck, just below his beard line. But just as he thrust his arm forward, the man’s eyes snapped open. Seth wasn’t sure if the man moved—unlikely, given the shock on his face—or if Seth was so taken aback by his sudden awakening that his arm altered course.

  Regardless, instead of driving the blade into the man’s throat, he missed and the three-inch blade landed itself a little to the right, tearing through the man’s t-shirt and embedding itself in a spot just above his collarbone.

  The man cried out, but before Seth could withdraw the blade, the man’s leg swung out and swept him off his feet.

  Seth crashed hard to the ground, landing on his elbow and hip at the same time.

  The air was forced out of him and he made an oomph sound. Even as he struggled to fill his lungs with a fresh breath, he was scrambling to his feet.

  Get the girl.

  You are chosen.

  Seth had only made it to all fours when the man’s foot shot out again. Instead of a sweeping gesture, however, this one came directly at him.

  The rubber sole of the man’s running shoe struck Seth directly in his right eye.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, stars clouding his vision. He heard a cracking sound, and his eye felt as if it had been driven backward in his skull.

  He instinctively reached for the leg that had struck him, but with his vision blurred in his right eye, he misjudged the distance and his hand fell short. The man’s foot retracted, but this time when he fired a kick, Seth was ready for it and somehow rolled to one side.

  The third kick missed its mark.

  Seth sprung awkwardly to his feet, wobbling as dizziness took hold. The man was momentarily distracted as he tried to remove the letter opener from his shoulder, and Seth lunged with hands and fingers outstretched.

  Voice or not, Seth had never been much of a fighter; he was too small, too frail. Weak bones, his mother had repeatedly told him. So his instinct to grab the man’s throat—for what? To throttle him?—probably wasn’t the best idea. Indeed, the man, even though he was preoccupied by the shiny metal letter opener protruding from his chest, had more than enough time to swivel his hips to one side as Seth came at him. Although he remained sitting, Seth still somehow managed to miss his nec
k—miss all of him, really—and instead careened into the now empty side of the chair. The man continued to roll out of the way, shoving Seth’s face further into the chair.

  And now Seth was facing the wrong way in a teal-colored vinyl chair, the man that he had tried to kill standing behind him.

  He heard something metal fall to the ground, and Seth knew that the man had tossed the letter opener aside.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he shouted.

  Seth swiveled to stare at the man. He was standing with his feet spread, his arms at his sides, fists and jaw clenched. A dark stain was spreading on his shirt, starting at his collarbone but soon extending across his chest.

  He had been stuck good, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The man had an insane look on his face, one that rivaled Seth’s when he had stabbed the receptionist with the pen.

  Seth’s eye was still messed up, and the vision there had degenerated into a thin peephole of light surrounded by darkness. He found he could see better by simply closing his right eye.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded again.

  Seth said what came into his mind first.

  “I am chosen.”

  The man’s face twisted into a sneer.

  Wrong answer.

  Then it was his turn to lunge, but he didn’t come at Seth with his hands outstretched like some demented poltergeist coming from a television screen. No, he came at Seth like a fighter.

  The man’s fist struck Seth on the bridge of the nose before he could even get his hands up to defend himself. There was an audible crunch and he howled in pain.

  Hot liquid immediately leaked out of both nostrils and spilled into his mouth.

  “I am chosen,” Seth repeated, blood spraying from his lips.

  “Yep, you sure are,” the man said, and then delivered another punch directly to the same spot as the previous one.

  Seth’s nose was reduced to mush, and this time the sound that exited his mouth was a wet, bubbling noise.

  He fell from the chair and slid to the ground, turning so that he landed on his back. Staring up at the man with the red beard with his one good eye, Seth could feel blood trickle down the back of his throat. His breathing had become labored, and with his nose spread across his face like pale peanut butter, he had to resort to gasping with his mouth. But each time he opened it, blood spilled into his throat and he gagged and coughed. In order to prevent from choking, Seth turned his head to one side and spat a wad of blood onto the clean white floor.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time, you little fucker. Who are you, and what the fuck do you want with Alice? Are you one of the bikers from the bar?”

  “I am cho—”

  This time he didn’t even get the entire sentence out before a swift kick was delivered to his ribs. He heard multiple cracks this time, and the air was forced out of him like a balloon being popped. Seth curled onto his side and gasped, trying desperately to breathe.

  Get the girl, you are chosen, the voice in his head repeated, and if Seth had had any air left in him at that moment, he would have screamed.

  How the fuck am I supposed to do that? How?

  He spat more blood.

  Blinking hard, he tried to clear the stars from his good eye.

  Then he saw it, gleaming like a beacon on the floor: just beyond his arm was the letter opener. Another kick collided with his spine this time, and although pain shot down both of his legs, it also served to push his fallen body toward the weapon. Still unable to draw a full breath, he somehow managed to muster the strength to reach out and grab it, wrapping his hand tightly around the handle and pulling it into his body.

  If the man saw, he didn’t react.

  “If you say that one more—”

  Seth spun onto his back, swinging the knife in a wide arc. His only hope was that the man was close enough to make contact—somewhere, anywhere.

  He got lucky.

  For once in his life, Seth got lucky.

  His looping arc not only caught the man by surprise, but Seth didn’t even need to alter the trajectory when he flipped over. The blade slid right into the sole of the man’s foot. He man screamed and hunched over.

  At long last, Seth let out a moan and his diaphragm relaxed, flooding his body with oxygen. Imbued with renewed strength, Seth tried to leap to his feet.

  Unfortunately, his cracked ribs prevented him from doing any sort of ‘leaping’, and he instead only managed a half crouched, half crawling position. But it didn’t matter; he was now at even height with the other man bent over, pulling the blade from his foot. Seth hurled his body forward, his shoulder connecting with the top of the man’s head. Together they spilled forward, and by some miracle, Seth, who still couldn’t quite straighten his body out, ended out on top.

  At some point during their struggle, they had become tangled in one of the cables from the woman on the bed. As predicted, the machine, a square blue thing about the size of a toaster, started emitting an obnoxious beeping sound.

  The man grunted and went to throw Seth off of him, but his arms was wrapped up in the tubing and when he extended his hand, it only stretched a few inches before snagging. The toaster thing came crashing down and landed with a hard thunk on Seth’s already bruised back and ribs.

  He arched his back and cried out, causing the toaster-thing to fall off him and finally stop beeping.

  The man beneath him bucked, trying to flip Seth off, while at the same time he tried to free his arms. It would be only moments before the man recovered, Seth knew, and he had very little time to think, let alone act.

  He tried to locate the letter opener, but it was either still way down below in the man’s foot, or he had pitched it somewhere as he had done before. What his reaching hand did find, however, was the blue medical device.

  Seth’s finger grasped a handle of sorts and he swung it down on the man’s unsuspecting head. The man grunted and thrust his hips again, but Seth used this movement to bring himself into a sitting position and swung again, this time by launching the toaster with two hands.

  The man went limp and Seth tossed the machine aside. Still trying to get a full breath, he rolled off him and onto his back. For a good minute he stayed nearly as still as the unconscious man and woman in the room with him.

  The only sound was his noisy breathing through his mouth.

  Staring at the ceiling with his one good eye, he finally broke the near silence.

  “I am chosen.” The words came out in an incomprehensible wet garble. A pang of intense pain radiated from his broken ribs and he clenched his teeth. “And now I’ll get the girl.”

  47.

  Jared Lawrence’s eyes snapped open, and memories of what had happened in the church immediately came flooding back.

  Corina! his mind screamed, and he tried to pull himself to his feet.

  Only he couldn’t do either: he couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t rise from a lying position.

  Wide-eyed, he scanned his surroundings. There was something in his mouth, something like a tough jerky, hard and salty, which not only prevented him from screaming, but also somehow affixed his head to the table. The lights shining into his eyes were bright, and all he could make out was the shadow of a man hovering over him.

  “Hurry,” he heard a somewhat recognizable voice say. “He’s waking.”

  There was an affirmative grunt and he felt an uncomfortable pressure on his thigh.

  Did they take me? Did the man who grabbed Corina’s arm take me? Her and me?

  But before he could think these questions through, he felt more pressure on his leg, only this time it was deep and painful.

  “Arggh,” he sputtered, his tongue traveling up and down the length of whatever was in his mouth like a horse bit.

  He closed his eyes against the pain, and only opened them again when a few seconds later the pain and pressure subsided.

  The lights dimmed, and the face over him slowly came into focus.

  What he now saw wa
s a belt was pulled from his mouth, and Jared licked at his dry and cracked lips.

  “You’re back,” the man said, a friendly smile creeping from beneath his beard.

  This too incited questions in Jared’s mind—back? From where?—but like the other queries, he had no time to consider them.

  “Where am I?” he asked. His throat was dry, parched. “Where is Corina?”

  Confusion passed over the man’s face, but this expression faded so quickly, Jared wasn’t sure it had actually been there.

  He tried to sit up, but the man gently rested his palm on his forehead.

  “Best stay down for a bit longer—let the drugs kick in.”

  Jared squeezed his eyes shut again.

  Drugs?

  For a brief moment, he almost receded back into the oblivion that which he had just crawled out of.

  It was all too much.

  “He’s good,” he heard another voice say. “Got the bullet out, stitched him up—should be good to go.”

  The hand on his forehead gently caressed his head, sweeping his greasy hair from his face. This simple act felt good; after all this time and after all that had happened, it felt good to be looked after, even if he’d had to be shot to receive the treatment.

  But then there was Corina...

  “Corina?” he croaked again.

  There was a silent pause, and this time Jared opened his eyes.

  “We’re looking for her,” the man that still hovered over him said.

  As Jared’s eyes continued to adjust to the lighting, he realized that he recognized the man.

  It was the priest—Father Carter, or something like that.

  The man’s smile grew.

  “My name is Father Carter Duke,” he said, reading his thoughts. Then he waved a hand to the other man, the one who had been fixing his leg but who was now standing beside the priest. “And this is my friend Pike.”

  Jared didn’t know what to say—what was an appropriate greeting for a time like this? Nice to meet you? Thanks for saving my life?

  Neither of these two options felt right, so instead he said what was most pressing. “I need to find Corina.”