All and all, we probably went to around three dozen houses, with some of the infected being in a far worse state than others. Some were getting out of it, fully able to walk and talk and in no need for any healing whatsoever, while others were mere days away from their assured demise. For them, if their family agreed to it, Moleman would call for an ambulance by sending a message to his party group chat, from which either Rat or Plus would send an ambulance, typically also coming along with it. Plus was especially quick, and I got to watch him carry a fully-grown goblin out of the house two times. Watching such a massive man squeeze himself into the tiny goblin houses was a comedic delight, and it took every fiber of my self-restraint to not burst out laughing.
And now, the time is about half past one, and we’re finally taking a well-earned break in the form of lunch. For today’s lunch, we’re enjoying sandwiches bought from the point shop, as always. I asked him why we don’t buy stuff from the city’s many bakeries and shops, to which he gave me a number of reasons. For one, we have to curb the famine at any cost, and then there’s also the matter of affordability, and, finally… The food they sell isn’t tasty. It took a bit of prodding to get him to admit this part, but it’s the truth. The food in the point store is often of the earth-variety, fitting our palettes much better—not to mention always being fresh and ripe.
So, we eat. This is a nice park to eat in. I think I’ve done a fair bit of experimenting in here. Generally, foliage is very good for hiding things in, and there’s less of a chance of people stumbling on you.
Also, the bench we’re currently sharing is comfy. Always a plus. I take another bite. “And what then?” I ask between chews.
“We obviously couldn’t stay in that city anymore. I mean, he tried to arrest us simply for being human. Diplomacy was off the table, so I fought for us to leave, but Plus wanted to see if he could change their minds, and… Well, he couldn’t, but he tried. We’re lucky we got away with our lives intact,” Moleman says, ending his little story by chomping on his own sandwich. “Still, a very interesting situation.”
“Yeah, sure sounds like it,” I say, swallowing. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
“About what?”
“I mean, if I hadn’t…”
He waves his hand. “It’s alright. Just look at us—we’re a race of strangely colored, massive aliens who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, unable to talk the language, with plenty of us being inherently gobliophobic simply because these guys look like, well… Goblins. There was going to be tension. What you did was just a preliminary blow.”
“I guess,” I say, but I don’t really feel it. I look down at what little I have left of my sandwich. “So, where are we going after this?”
Moleman hums a little before gulping down his last bite. “Let’s see, we last visited the Mettrin household, so the next one should be the Collis-Han household, which is fairly close by.”
I stuff the last bit of my sandwich into my mouth-hole. Between massive chews, I point over to a nearby dilapidated house, and ask, “That one, right?”
Mouth frozen mid-bite, Moleman’s confused eyes follow my finger over to the house. His mouth slowly closes and he turns to me, brows furrowed. “Why would you think that?”
“Because it’s, you know…” I take a sniff, frowning a little at the putrid smell. “It’s rancid. Of the five people in there, two are dead, and the rest are sick. From what I can tell, two of the sick ones don't have long left either…” I wipe at my nose. Well, anyway. “If it isn’t where we’re going, that’s fine. I was only guessing.” I chuckle and smile playfully at him. “Maybe I’ll get the next one right?”
Ah, wait, that was the wrong dialogue option. When did I last see him this pale? Oh, and now his hand is trembling. For the record, if he drops that sandwich, I’m eating it.
Except he doesn’t drop it—it disappears into his inventory in a flash, with him flying to his feet just as quickly. He takes one look at Charm where she stands tethered and calm, then turns towards the house I pointed out and starts sprinting. I blink at his fading back. Wait, is he seriously…?
I leap to my feet and scramble after him. “Hey, Moleman, wait up!”
By the time I catch up with him, he’s already pacing back and forth outside the door, staff clutched in a tight grip, only pausing to try to glimpse inside the dark windows. His eyes fall on me as I approach, but before he says anything, he turns to the door again, raps his staff on the door aggressively, and shouts into the doorframe, “Please open! I’m a doctor—let me help!”
He turns to me again, face twisted in inquisitive worry. How do I best say this…? “They aren’t moving. Two of the three live ones are lying down, and the last one is… sitting, I think? So, they aren’t answering. I guess they don’t want to—”
Moleman takes a few steps back, and I only have time to think that maybe he’ll leave them to their fermentation when he braces his shoulder and rams into the door, trying and failing to break it down. He hisses in pain. We’re not exactly in the main street or anything, but I’m still starting to worry that the sound might be drawing attention. “Come on, Moleman, they aren’t—” He takes a few steps back and tries again, to equal lack of success. I sigh. Alright, fine. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hang on.” He looks at me with real desperation. “Stand back—watch a master do his work.”
Ignoring the nagging feeling that there’s really no reason to do this, I squat down in front of the door, leveling my eyes with the keyhole. I stick my claws inside. Let’s see here, with a little this, and a little that… Poke poke poke…
Click!
I stand up, take a step back, and do a funny little curtsy, showing him the door. With an indecipherable look on his face, he strides past me, throws open the door, and then instantly stumbles back at the release of a putrid cloud of stench. Yeesh, that’s bad. It’s to the point where I can’t even tell how for long whoever’s released this has been dead. Nevertheless, once he’s recovered himself, Moleman enters, holding his elbow over his lower face. I enter behind him. He gives me a look. “Dead bodies are on the second floor,” I say. “The live ones are… in the same room, I think. It’s hard to tell with the rotting stench thing.”
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Not listening any further, he heads towards the stairs. I follow him at a reasonable pace. This place is really badly off, though. Even ignoring the smell, it’s almost completely destitute. The smell upstairs is only matched by the stench wafting out of the kitchen—or, I guess, what’s left of it. Small place, kind of cozy. Hand-carved wooden toys, charcoal pictures on the walls, a table set for five, and dust covering everything. I follow Moleman up the stairs.
The rancid smell gets worse. Down the hall, through a door—that’s where they are. Moleman creeps closer towards it, hand clutching his staff tight enough to turn his knuckles WHITE. I follow after him.
He puts his hand on the doorknob, turns it, and pulls the door open.
A swarm of corpseflies burst out in a cloud, their BLACK wings beating as they surround Moleman and then pass him, flying past me, spreading through the hall, closely followed by the unmistakable scent of rotting flesh and festering bacteria, thick enough to make my eyes water. Ahead of me, Moleman stands in the doorway, his back turned to me, frozen in place. Staff in hand, he tries to grip the doorframe, only for his trembling hand to slide down the rough wood, staff tumbling out of his hand as he collapses to his knees, his body beginning to heave and convulse as though he’s about to puke or something.
I pace up behind him, poking my head into the room. Ah, yeah, that’s bad. Let’s see… The two corpses on the bed seem to be the parents, but it’s difficult to tell since they’ve kind of melded together. I can mainly tell them apart since one—the father, I think—is so far into his decomposition that he’s turned almost completely BLACK, his limbs dried up while his head and chest have partially dissolved, corpseworms and various bacteria making a feast of his face to the point where it’s hard to tell if he’s even got a jaw anymore. The chest is open, but the internal organs are all one big mass of melted, necrotic tissue, interspersed with little patches of eggs and mold.
At his side, arms slung around and across him, is a bloated corpse, equally faceless, though as a result of the welts and weeping wounds, this time. Considering the size, it ought to be the mother, not that I can tell by the actual shape of the body or anything. Her abdomen is swollen enough to look pregnant, but the faint gnawing and scraping coming from within tells me that the case is completely different.
However, the thing that I think made Moleman lose his lunch just now is probably the three survivors. Three kids, one being a toddler going by the size, with the other two being maybe seven and ten each, though it’s difficult to tell. The two smaller lie in an equally small bed, bundled together in much the same way as their parents. The tiny one is so swollen with chafed-up nodules and built-up infection that it looks like a little balloon animal, the clothes it wears clinging so tightly around its limbs that they’ve turned a deep, dead purple. The one holding onto it as though it was the only thing that matters anymore looks moderately better, though the football-sized abdomen is making a strong case for its remaining lifetime being brief. Unlike the toddler, this one is actually able to look at us; tired, dead eyes watching us as though we’re spectors of oncoming death. Worryingly enough, it seems as though that thought makes it smile. Hm.
The last one is a bit larger, and not as infected as the others, so I can tell that it’s a girl. She sits on the floor, her exposed knees covered with cracked and blooded skin, one hand raised to lie on the bedridden child’s shoulder. She sees us in less of a fever-formed haze, so among them, I guess she has the highest chance of survival, assuming we treat her quickly. The other two… Not quite.
I turn back to Moleman. “Hey, Moleman, we should probably call an—”
Ah, he’s on all fours. Is it just me, or did the puddle of puke he made earlier expand a little? And is he…? Oh, yeah, now that I’m listening closer to it, I can hear him mumbling a prayer of some sort. Hrm. That’s worrying. He’s the one with the magic and the access to ambulances, so if he wants these kids saved, then he’s the one who…
Not that I care, of course. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe that apostle of cruelty isn’t so off the mark. I mean, if these three kids die now, he won’t have to watch them ferment while alive for the next hours, days, weeks, or even months. There’d be a lot less suffering in the world if they just died right now. At least two of them have mostly lost the will to live, so I can’t really…
There’s a rasping breath. The girl on the floor turns one dark eye to me. And all of a sudden, by the effect of divine intervention, she can see me. And through that, she trusts me.
Her little face scrunches up, body moving for the first time in hours, maybe days, skin cracking at the movement, fresh blood with the scent of disease rolling down her face and hands as she says, in a hoarse, whispering little voice, “Please, please, help us.” Her throat is sore, words only barely able to escape her diseased chest. “Please, mister angel—save them.”
…Ugh. I sigh, turn to Moleman, and accept the fact that I’m never getting out of this gig.
Walking up to where he’s kneeling, I squat down next to him, putting a hand on his back. He jerks at the touch, but can’t bring himself to move any more. Unsure of what else to do, I grab his shoulders and lift him a little off the ground, bringing his face to my level. Wow, he does not look good. If I couldn’t smell the warmth on him, I might have thought we had three corpses in here, heh. Ah, shoot, making jokes isn’t helping, uh… I shake him a little. “Hey, man, pull yourself together, this is no time to…” No, that isn’t working either. Hrm.
I hug him. When I stop hugging him, he’s still as listless and wide-eyed as before. Weird, that usually works…
Words didn’t help, physical affection didn’t help… I frown at him. “Sorry about this,” I say and slap him across the face. He blinks at me. Oh, hey, someone’s home! Well, maybe. I lean in closer. “Hey, Moleman, sorry to say, but I kind of need you to pull yourself together if you want to save these poor innocent kids. I could save them, but I don’t think you’d like it, so unless you want me to do something bad, you might want to snap out of it. You hear me?”
His jaw works itself as if he’s trying to say something, which is good enough for me. I drag him to his feet and support him all the way over to the kids. “Here, see?” I say, pointing at them. “Do you want to help them or not?”
“Ah… ahh…” he moans powerlessly, but being able to make any noise is good enough for me. The staff is on the floor, so I pick it up and press it into his hand. I point it towards, let’s see… the toddler, maybe? Woo-woo-woo… Magic, go! Ah, it’s not working.
“Moleman, could you—”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!” he abruptly screams, flying out of my arms and casting the staff aside like it’s a poisonous snake, and suddenly he’s running towards the door, only to trip on the doorframe and go tumbling. What is he even doing anymore? Picking the staff back off the floor, I jog up to him. Now he’s lying all curled up on the floor, knees pressed to his chest, and sobbing softly.
…No, wait, scratch that—he’s giggling. Which is a bit more worrying, honestly. I crouch down next to him. “Moleman, um…” What am I even trying to say here? This is insane. He’s acting like a lunatic. “Do you want to… go? We don’t have to save the kids, that’s totally optional here, man. It’s cool. We can go get another sandwich, check if Charm’s been stolen or not… It’s alright.”
He freezes and goes silent. Then, he wipes his face, pulls himself to his feet and smiles at me, holding out his hand. Confused but obedient, I place the staff in his hand. He looks down at it, his left eye twitching. “No, wait, I’ve changed my mind,” he pushes the staff back into my hands. “I’ll call for an ambulance, could you go reassure the—the—the…” He makes a gravelly, hoarse noise, like the last air escaping a dead man’s lungs. “The patients.”
“Um… Yeah, alright, sure,” I say, stepping back towards the room. I pause before entering, frowning at him. “Are you… okay? You aren’t, like—”
“NOW!” he shrieks, his voice cracking. “Now, please, oh, God, now, please, don’t do this to me, please, Fennrick, Kitty, Lo, just—now. Now.”
I jolt back. “Ah, uh, yeah, um… Of course. S—sorry,” I say, cowering back and into the room. There are the kids. Good. I go down on one knee in front of them. For once, I’m happy that I’ve got the innocent adoration skill. Without that, I don’t think this girl would be looking at me like this. I muster a smile at her. “Hey, kid, um… What’s your name?”
For a few seconds, she just looks at me like I’m the patron saint of saving dying kids. She draws a labored breath. “M—Mitt,” she says. “Is… is mom…?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder.“ She isn’t with us anymore. But my friend… he’s a doctor… He’s calling for an ambulance now. They’ll be here soon. So, just take it easy. If you want, you can fall asleep now. You’re tired, aren’t you? But it’s okay now. You can lie down—your brothers will be fine.”
And she trusts me. So, she smiles, her eyes flutter closed, and I catch her in my arms.