With great circumstance, Andalon placed one of her hands on mine. Suddenly, my senses were overwhelmed all over again, filling me with awareness of a… a scouring light; I don’t know how else I’d describe it. It was heat and pressure and weight and power, it was almost beyond anything I had the words to name. And in that light… there were voices. A chorus of uncountably many voices.
Wailing in agony.
Wyrms beyond number disintegrated, all at once—tiny rinds of black, vanishing into the scouring light. The sense of loss was so overpowering, I had to pull away. Even after we broke contact, my arms trembled with the aftershocks of the devastation Andalon had faced.
I panted and gasped.
“I was so hurt and scared, Mr. Genneth. I swam and swam and swam.”
Swam obviously made me think of the river from my dream.
“Where did you swim to?” I asked.
“Here,” she said, looking around, and then pointing at the ground. “There’s so much darkness here; it’s so scary… but the meanies are scared of the darkness, too, so… I think they won’t come after me and the wyrmehs.”
Nodding, I smiled in encouragement. “That was smart, Andalon. Good job.”
“Really?!” She wept tears of joy. Her arms shook. “No one… no one’s ever said that to Andalon before.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s true.”
But her smile flattened out. “Andalon needs to keep the wyrmehs safe. I need to get out. I don’t want the darkness to get them.” Her shoulders slumped. “It’s so hard, tryin’ to save everybody.”
“It sure is,” I said, with a nod, “and I wish it weren’t.”
We spent a moment in silence, and only for it to come to an end as an appetizing scent zoomed into my nostrils like a Munine pneumatic hyperloop. With a grimace, I staggered to my feet and followed the scent to its source: the entrance to the reception room of a Number Ward. Actually, no, that wasn’t right. The smell continued onward. It was just that the reception room’s door was ajar, and of the sources of the scent, it was the closest.
I stepped inside. Andalon followed close behind me.
Two square support columns stood in the middle of the room, and there was a reception desk built into the wall to my right. Two television-sized consoles were mounted on the unyielding wall opposite me, flanked by doors to treatment areas at either end. Windows lined the wall at my left, separating the reception room from the adjacent corridor. The room had been liberally furnished with plastic orchids: one on the reception counter, others on the stands at either end of each of the sofas, on a handful of small tables. One of the paintings on the walls even depicted an orchid. The couches scattered about the outpatient reception room were made of synthetic leather—bold and blue—and zigzagged in ten feet long strips that bore seats on either side.
The room was as lively as the fake plants, as quiet as a T’zaban mummy’s tomb, only of much more recent make. Even in the middle of the Night, a place like this should have had at least a couple of patients seated on the sofas, weighted down by quotidian burdens, nervously eager for some help to soothe their aches and pains. But those days were now long gone—and it had been barely a week! Outpatient rooms were being retrofitted into bedrooms, either for the staff, or for the ever-rising NFP-20 caseload, leaving this and other reception areas superfluous. All that mattered was whether or not you had it, and the type that you had.
The emptiness was almost unbearable.
The fluorescent ceiling lights flickered on automatically once I stepped into the room, as did the TV consoles on the walls. I quickly swiped my hand over the console by the door and shut off the lights, not wanting to attract any attention. This left the room bathed in the pallor of the consoles’ screen-savers. Like every persistent image in the hospital, the screen-saver was full of comfort, reassurance, soft zest, wellness, and vim. They showed children frolicking on a late, smiling afternoon, captured mid-leap over grassy fields and dandelions swept in the breeze, the lens flare shining bright above their outstretched arms.
It made the room seem less empty, and, somehow, that made it that much more awful of an experience.
Fortunately, I was too hungry to keep thinking about it.
Hoping to suss out the delicious scent’s source, I looked around. I searched behind the sofas and under the modern, legless tables jutting out from the wall.
I found it easier to kneel on the ground and search from that vantage point than to keep bending down every five seconds. If only finding the source of the smell was that easy. Even the trash cans were empty. Perhaps even licked clean. With every passing second, my search grew increasingly frantic. Even a sacred hummingbird would have thought I was twitchy.
Andalon watched me with bemusement.
“Do you know where that smell is coming from?” I asked her.
“Maybe the… uh…” Pausing for a moment, Andalon pressed her arms together—palms touching. She undulated them like a snake, pointing at one of the sofas.
“The sofa?” I said.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”
The little spirit-girl pumped her fists in excitement. “You can eat it!”
My gaze flattened. You could have built houses of cards atop my eyebrows.
“I’d really prefer not eating any more furniture,” I said.
And before you say anything, no, this wasn’t me being a hypocrite; it was me being a coward.
“Why not?” she asked. “It tastes good, right?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Everything tastes good to me now, Andalon,” I answered. To be frank, I would have loved some sofa tempura. A ten-foot long sofa fried in batter and drizzled in teriyaki sauce sounded divine—and that’s exactly why I didn’t want to eat it. “If I started eating a sofa,” I said, “I don’t think I’d be able to stop.” And I doubted that my body would be able to integrate ten feet of freshly converted biomass without transforming me into something hopelessly inhuman.
“What about one of the food rectangleds?” Andalon suggested.
“The what?”
Andalon stuck her arms up straight. “The big ones. The ones you’re not s‘posed to shake.”
“The vending machines.”
She nodded. “Yeah!”
“I’ve already tried that,” I said.
“There might be some stuff left,” she said.
I shook my head.
I flashed back to those partially eaten vending machines I’d seen further back. I could only think of three explanations for them.
One: I wasn’t the only closeted transformee among WeElMed’s employees. Two: current and/or prospective patients were wising as to the hospital’s sequestration policy. Three: transformees were sneaking in from the city streets, like mice in search of food and shelter.
Wait, no, there were other possibilities. Some of the sequestered patients could have broken out on their own. Or, perhaps, someone had chosen to set them free.
The mayhem that would cause…
A shiver ran down my back.
“Oh, yeah!” Andalon said.
I turned to face her. “Yes?”
“What about the bodies?” she asked. “They’re super nummy!” She spun around on one foot, gesturing excitedly. “They’re full of yum-yums!”
My immediate response was horror. I was about to angrily ask Andalon why on earth the thought of people eating one another would make her happy when I realized the obvious answer on my own. If you wanted to stop the spread of fungal plague that sent its victims to Hell, what better way than to have the transformees devour the bodies of the infected, both the dead and the living? That would certainly help limit the Green Death’s spread. It also matched what I’d seen in my 268 patients: a person’s soul was automatically uploaded into the wyrms (or transformee)s who ate them.
Talk about a high-speed connection!
“It’s a war of attrition,” I muttered, with a shudder and a shake of my head. Dizziness rocked me.
“A what?” Andalon asked.
I think I’m gonna be sick…
But I didn’t feel nauseous, just hungry.
I explained it to Andalon just as Heggy had explained it to me. “A war of attrition,” I said, “is when you try to win by wearing out the bad guy.” I shook my head and stared Andalon in the eyes. “Both you and the fungus are fighting over bodies. Whichever side consumes the most bodies first wins. If the wyrms eat everyone, there’s no one left to infect and send to Hell. If the fungus kills everyone first, there’s no one left to save.”
“That’s awful…” she said.
“Oh God,” I muttered. I swallowed hard and smiled bitterly. “And that’s why I thought, ‘I think I’m gonna be sick.’”
Suddenly, Andalon’s eyes went wide. She pointed at the reception counter, leaping up and down with gusto. “There, Mr. Genneth! The smelly smell is there!”
I darted behind the reception counter. “Where?”
“Uh… ” She opened her mouth and smiled. “Ah! It’s at the opposite of up!”
“It’s called down,” I said, as I crouched down.
And then, I saw it.
The smell was coming from a lurid orange, plastic biohazard waste bin. It should have been mounted on a wall, but, instead, it was on the floor, hidden beneath the reception counter.
I guess whoever should have disposed of it never got around to doing so.
I stared at the waste bin for all of two seconds before tugging my face-mask off and tossed it aside, and then lurching at the waste bin, drooling at the mouth.
I pried the lid off and pulled out a couple of used needles, muttering “fudge” and “flibbertigibbet” beneath my breath when their tips pricked the lag-riddled human skin on my right hand. I tossed them in my mouth and bit down on them. The taste was kind of like fried noodles covered in sesame seeds, though the savory crunch was coupled by the sting of rubbing alcohol on my tongue.
Pulling myself up by the stool behind the reception counter, I picked up the waste bin and set it onto the countertop. I took my seat on the edge of the stool, reaching into the biohazard waste bin like it was a bag of popcorn. Bloody gloves, dirty needles, and fibrous, crusty gauze never tasted so good, to say nothing of the bits of severed flesh scattered among them—sliced cysts, strips of necrotic skin. They added rich, juicy flavors. A rancid toe was like a doughnut; bone and pus burst beneath my teeth like pomegranate seeds and sweet custard.
I didn’t know which was worse: the fact that I was consciously choosing to do this, or the fact that I felt deliciousness instead of nausea.
With two exceptions, these snacks didn’t have too much of an effect on my changes. The numbness suffusing my lower extremities got a little worse; more growth crept down my tail. The exceptions were my hand, where my extended noshing had significantly advanced the changes taking place. Though dark-violet wyrm flesh began to march beneath my right arm’s sleeve, the biggest changes afflicted my left. The stumps left over from my left hand’s lost fourth and fifth fingers merged with the rest of my hand as my palm widened and swelled. Bones and tendons shifted to the left, moving like sliding railway tracks as the gap between my two remaining fingers widened, until it was on par with the gap between my finger and my thumb, and if it looked wrong, it was only because my fingers had a lot of growing left to do, as my memory of Ellen’s changed hands made clear.
My pointer finger twitched as a wicked, night-black claw erupted from its tip. I was too scared to ‘try it out’, as much as my inner child might have wanted me to—and, no, I don’t mean Andalon.
While I’d been eating, Andalon had been busy taking advantage of her recent upgrade. She wasn’t truly corporeal, because she could still phase through solids, like she had when she’d stepped through the side of the reception counter. It seemed that the developments I’d undergone during her absence had strengthened my link to her to the point where I could now physically feel her touch against me. Even if physics wasn’t aware of her presence, my nervous system certainly was. She felt as real and solid as anything else I’d ever touched, though still terribly, terribly cold.
Andalon stood beside me while I gawked and moaned at my advancing changes. She muttered encouraging words, and occasionally stroked my side or lower back. I was content to leave her be, except on two occasions when I caught her calling me “wyrmeh” while she petted me. After the second time, my quickly placed glare got the message across, and stopped calling me that. Just because it was—or would be—accurate, that didn’t mean I liked it or wanted to hear it.
After getting her to stop, I realized I needed a better distraction, or the caustic self-awareness storming inside me was going to make me do something I’d seriously regret. So, I decided to turn on the news. The doom and gloom surely awaiting me there would be a perfect accompaniment to my biohazardous snacks. Anything that stood a chance of solidifying unpleasant associations with eating biomedical waste was a risk worth taking.
Before I turned on the TV, I walked over and planted my “snack bin” onto one of the sofas. My plan was to sit with my right thigh on the edge of the sofa. My tail had gotten long enough that its tip went past—and under—my knee, and now brushed the underside of my shin. I’d also gotten enough control over it that I now had to actively refrain from moving it, otherwise it would flail and bulge against my pants, and I was getting worried that the fabric would rip if I pushed it too hard.
Or if it got any bigger.
I clenched my teeth.
Focus.
As I said, I needed a better distraction.
Rising from my precarious seat, I walked over to one of the TV consoles on the wall and swiped my hand in front of its scanner; like every other part of the hospital’s tech network, you needed an ID confirmation before you could do so much as even change the channel. But nothing happened. No sprightly beep of acknowledgment. The box with the icon-studded access menu was nowhere to be seen.
I passed my hand over the scanner once again. Still nothing.
Then it hit me.
“Oh, fricassee me!” I cursed.
“Mr. Genneth?”
“My hand! It’s my hand!” I pointed to my right hand. “My chip!” I pressed my hands down atop my head. “Sword through my chest, all my data and permissions are in there!”