By his accent, Adam had most likely grown up in Crownsleep, up in northwestern Trenton. As far as appearances went, what wasn’t hidden behind Adam’s camo-patterned uniform, the overlay of black carbon-fiber armor, or his frightful gas mask spoke to a man who looked like a discount version of Jonan: blonde hair, blue eyes, with a prominent nose.

The two of us were hardly the only ones on dump truck duty. A dozen soldiers or so were doing the awful work of loading the corpses into the trucks. A few doctors and nurses were assisting in the effort, but the bulk of the work fell to the military. The chaos had not been good for relations between WeElMed’s staff and Vernon’s men.

The stretch of curb in front of the Administration Building was occupied by dump trucks, placed almost bumper to bumper. Ours was around the corner, the last in the line.

There were many reasons I’d opted for dump truck duty.

Unsurprisingly, after the battle, both the military and the hospital were cracking down on Type Two cases who were hiding their transformee status from the rest of us. Vernon’s soldiers were conducting inspections inside the Administration Building. The appointments for the examinations could be deferred if you were hard at work, but not for long.

So, I kept myself scarce.

All of the conference attendees had agreed that I ought to stay out of the building until they were done. I would have done so even if they hadn’t told me to. I couldn’t bear the hypocrisy of standing by while everyone else was being outed.

I’d chosen the dump truck in the side street because it meant I only needed to look at one corpse pile, rather than see all of them lined up alongside the fleet of dump trucks. It was less tempting that way. It made it easier for me to resist the bottomless pit the hunger was hollowing out inside of me.

Right now, it was difficult for me to look at my colleagues, simply because of how much the wyrm attack had done to erode what little remained of our morale.

Before, there’d been a sense of camaraderie, despite the insurmountable odds. It might have been a losing battle, but we were fighting it, and that gave us a reason to keep going. If we couldn’t stop the fungus, at least we could give it one heck of a bad time.

But now?

People were tired of fighting. Our nurses no longer bothered to hide their despair. Things were quieting down.

The lights were going out.

I turned to the next body in the pile.

“Do you need help with the next one?” the Lt. Colonel asked.

I shook my head.

“For a doctor, you’re a strong fellow, that’s for sure.”

“The fungus has reduced these bodies to skin and bone,” I said, numbly. “Or not even that. They’re…” I sighed. “They’re not very heavy.”

It was an explanation, yes—just not the real one.

Bending over, I grabbed the next body with both hands: a grown man, felled at the peak of his life. I made filamentous plumes of psychic power erupt from the street. They pushed up on the corpse from below with enough force that placing the body into the truck was just a matter of maintaining the momentum, swinging like a cherry picker.

The corpse hit the dump truck’s cadavers with an ugly thump, skin slapping on skin.

A wave of hunger rippled through me, leaving me feeling light headed. I had to pull my head away from the dump truck.

Closing my eyes, I groaned.

Lt. Colonel Kaplan looked up from the naked corpse he was hefting into the dump truck.

A teenage boy.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

I groaned again. “No.”

I turned away from the dump truck with a shudder, not wanting to make eye contact with its sweet, putrid jaws.

Honestly, I should have gotten the heck out of there right then and there, but I didn’t.

And that was my mistake.

I turned back to the bodies piled on the curb and the sett-paved street.

I swallowed a gob of sporey saliva.

Some of the bodies were wrapped in cloth or plastic, though many were completely naked.

I felt dizzy and lightheaded.

Other bodies still came with their original packaging. I saw casual attire, business suits, women’s midday finery, work clothes, several pairs of ruined samue. It was the machinery of daily life.

And what use was it now?

And then someone spoke. “Excuse me, sir? What’s going on?”

Raising my head, I find myself looking up at a tall, erudite man with short hair and small round spectacles.

Had this been the me from several days ago, I might have been fooled, but I was wiser now. The instant I saw his spotless formal business attire—dark gray pinstripe suit, slacks, dress shoes; a dark green tie with pale, hazy gold diagonal stripes—I knew he wasn’t among the living.

Also, his legs were passing through the corpse-hillock up on the curb.

He started screaming pretty quickly.

Sighing, I made a new progeny consciousness. Another set of eyes grew inside my mind as the ghost vanished from the Thick World and appeared inside Daydream Alley.

Well, inside another Daydream Alley.

What with all the dead people around me, new ghosts had been coming my way like you wouldn’t believe. I was stretching myself thin, trying to accommodate them all with mind-worlds of their own. I’d had to put a couple dozen of them in suspended animation to keep myself from passing out altogether.

This latest arrival got treated to a Daydream Alley that recreated our surroundings as they should have been: full of hustle and bustle, and sprouting up all over with green—only plants, instead of spores.

Shutting my eyes again, I played music in my mind, trying to drown out the noise of the businessman’s screams.

And he vomited on the street. Great.

“A little help here?” Lt. Colonel Kaplan asked.

My eyes fluttered open. Turning to him, I nodded and reached out to help him with a dead housewife, still in her afternoon best. I recognized her.

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I’d seen her sitting in a chair in one of the hallways in Ward E, waiting for her son to wake up.

Her son was the teenager Kaplan had chucked into the truck a couple of minutes before.

A coughing fit struck the Lt. Colonel, making him lose his grip on the mother’s body. Her skull hit a sett as the Lt. Colonel staggered and slumped against the side of the dump truck.

Her bones broke like dropped ceramic. Viscous black ichor slowly oozed from the wound.

“Why the fuck is this happening…?” Kaplan asked, barely above a whisper. His voice was hoarse, and his breaths were unsteady.

Had this been an ordinary day, I’d have asked him to mind his language, but it wasn’t, so I didn’t.

At times like this, only a jerk would.

I was starting to regret having taken corpse duty.

A quick glance at him through my wyrmsight showed his infection had significantly advanced. The aura was all over his body—a phantom skeleton, beyond the reach of his senses.

The Lt. Colonel shook his head.

“Who’d we upset?” he asked, wheezing for breath.

The darkness had woven its lightning under his eyes.

He let out a pitiful laugh. He tried to smile at me, and managed to succeed for all of three seconds before he gave up.

“I prayed, you know,” he said. His voice cracked. “I did everything I was supposed to. I went to church, I Divulged my sins, I tried to honor the Angel whenever I could. I did my job, I tried to help people. Shit… that’s why I enlisted.”

He looked up at the sky. Dusk was in full bloom, blotting the sky in indigo and wine.

“They say the world was made for us, you know? Well, let me tell you… and I don’t care who here me… that’s a load of shit! ‘Masters of our domain’.” He scoffed. “Look at this!” He gestured to the bodies all around us. “Just… look at it!”

I lowered my head.

“I’m tired of looking,” I said, with a sigh.

“This world wasn’t made for us, it was made for death.”

“I… I wouldn’t say that,” I said.

I couldn’t help but remember my conversation with Greg. “Sometimes… bad things just happen.”

The words were far more difficult to say than I would have thought.

“Tell that to them,” he said, pointing at the dead. His hand twitched in his gauntlets. “Flesh… blood… bone… death,” he said. “That’s all it is. Everywhere you look. Flesh… blood… bone… death. And fungus. Fucking fungus!”

He punched the side of the truck.

I flinched.

I was pretty sure I’d heard bones break.

“We put ourselves up on a high horse, thinkin’ we’re special. But in the end, what difference does it make? What difference does anyone make?”

Before I could answer him, I was buffeted by a wave of pain, centered on my head. It was like my skull was a pressure cooker.

The feeling reminded me of—

“—Oh fudge…” I muttered.

I felt like I’d felt back when Ileene had beaten the crud out of Andalon.

I staggered.

This was bad.

I turned around, instinctively looking for a way out. As I did, I got a good look of the narrow street and the ghosts that were now flickering in and out of existence, sometimes even mid-stride. Sometimes they appeared in twos or threes, arguing or laughing, sobbing or screaming in terror. Others were alone. I caught glimpses of them going about their day—flashes of memories—before they vanished back into non-existence.

I’d lost track of one of the most important rules of being a transformee: we don’t function properly when we’re really, really hungry.

My eyes watered. Aches dug into my head with every flicker.

Gripping my head and gritting my teeth, hoping to block the pain.

Saliva pooled in my mouth, swirling with sweet, tangy spores.

It was like gravel in water, only powdery and fine.

“Doctor,” Kaplan groaned, “what’s wrong?”

It was here that I began to panic.

I’d never pushed my hunger this far.

Godhead, no…

I’d been so stupid! So gosh darn stupid!

I should have eaten. I should have eaten.

Darn my shame, I thought.

I was vulnerable. We’d only just managed to scrape by in the battle with the fungus, and now look at me, I was neglecting my self-care—just as Yuth had said—and was putting myself and my spirit-passengers in danger of being seized by hell.

I couldn’t get Hoshi’s corpse off my mind.

Then, I felt a strange twinge in my shoulder.

I whipped my head around.

The phantom businessman was back. He’d broken out of Daydream Alley. Gone were his neat dress and prim, crisp appearance. He was panicked and disheveled.

I was panicked and disheveled.

Fungal filaments crawled beneath the man’s skin, spreading before my eyes.

“What did you do to me?” he moaned, pressing his hands to the sides of his head. “What’s happened to me?!”

Shutting my eyes, I willed him away.

A moment later, an electric sensation sparked through my body.

I fluttered my eyes open.

The ghost had pounced at me, and phased through.

Go away, I thought.

I shut my eyes again, squeezing even tighter than before.

But he wouldn’t go away.

Andalon, I thought-said, help! Demons!

I took several steps back.

The tingling sensation rippled across my back.

Oh fudge, it was my hunger. It was my fudging hunger.

I turned to see the corpses of three children standing behind me. Black ooze speckled in green dripped down their hospital gowns.

They wept.

The one in the middle was Hoshi.

“No!” I yelled.

“Mommy! Daddy! Where are you!?”

“Help! Help!”

I wanted to console them. I really did.

My head throbbed. I staggered.

They’re pouring into me, I realized. The dead.

The Lt. Colonel pushed off the dump truck and yelled. “Doc! What the fuck is going on?!”

Straining through tear-blurred eyes, I saw ghosts coming around the corner. They’d taken notice of me. They were racing toward me.

My hunger ratcheted up with each and every one of their footsteps.

Andalon appeared beside me, her face twisted in fear.

“Help!” I said, staggering back onto the curb—away from the corpses, thank the Angel.

“You need to eat, Mr. Genneth!”

Lt. Colonel Kaplan reached out to me.

The ghosts kept coming.

Andalon, I thought-said, get out of here! Quickly!

Andalon stared at me, her face full of fear.

So was mine.

I couldn’t allow there to be a repeat of what happened with Ileene. I couldn’t afford to be separated from Andalon because I’d let spirits injure her—not now, not when I needed her more than ever.

Please! I begged her.

She vanished just as the ghosts reached her. Instead, the spirits fell through me.

“Doc! Doc!”

The Lt. Colonel had put his hands on my shoulders. He shook me, yelling at me. I could see the fear and concern in his eyes, behind his gas mask, fear and concern mixed in his eyes.

The heat and tightness of my hazmat suit was fudging unbearable.

Sweet deliciousness wafted in through my suit’s built-in rebreather. The aroma got trapped inside my hazmat suit. It hit me like a sledgehammer. I fell to my knees. My kneecaps hit the fan-shaped stone pavement—not that I felt anything.

I gagged. Green, powdery saliva spewed from my mouth. The solution dissolved my hazmat suit’s visor like it was just a sugary glaze, and then splattered onto the Lt. Colonel’s face and chest. The acids melted through his gas mask and his body armor. They sizzled like oil on a hot grill.

Lt. Colonel Kaplan toppled backward. The back of his helmet bashed against the setts.

Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to dive head-first into the corpse-mound at my side. The fungus was calling to me.

I wondered: were my eyes turning silver?

But it wasn’t just the dead.

I looked over the Lt. Colonel. He was dying; he had been, for hours, now. His allure was nothing compared to the ripe cadavers on the ground.

And yet…

I had to make a choice. I could throw myself onto the corpse-pile and change all at once, like Karl had, or I could fall on the one, still warm body right in front of me.

I tried to use my psychokinesis to pull a body free from the pile, but my plexus threads came out flickering and frazzled. More of the hillock came apart as a couple more bodies spilled onto the stone, away from me.

Fudge.

Angel forgive me.

I was falling, and I couldn’t stop it. All I could do was choose where I fell.

I fell on Kaplan.

Angel, forgive me.

I didn’t want him to scream. I was afraid of what might happen.

And I was afraid of losing the rest of myself to the change.

Even after all I’d been through, I was still afraid.

For days, I’d been struggling to conceal my neck’s inhuman length—but no longer. I sprang my head at Adam. My jaws opened, and kept on opening, wider and wider. My lips tore open at the sides as my lower jaw distended like a snake’s. I pressed my hanging mouth onto Adam’s face. My throat caught his screams. For a moment, I panicked that I wouldn’t be able to swallow him all, but it quickly passed as my corrosive saliva softened the soldier’s skull. I heard the crink and crack of his bones dissolving in my mouth.

I sucked down his head like a chocolate egg with caramel filling. Like truffles and nougat. I shoved his neck down my gullet and slurped up his rich, fungus-stained blood. Lifting my jaws from his drained, headless corpse, I licked his flanks. His armor was cotton candy, dissolving beneath my tongue. His flesh burbled as my acid saliva thinned him and burned him, turning his flanks into a soft paste. I stuck one of his arms down my throat, all the way up to his armpit. I bit it off.

Bone effervesced on my tongue.

Deep within, I screamed at myself to stop, but I couldn’t. The hunger was overriding my inhibitions. I stuffed his other arm down my throat. His torso followed soon after.