Noah tried to flex his fingers. His first reaction was concern that the injury would render his hand unusable, and to his alarm, his fingers only twitched slightly when he commanded them to close.

Then the edges of the gash began to subtly pull themselves together like a stubborn zipper, and Noah lost his train of thought. He staggered from the sudden hunger that rose up from within him.

“Get back,” someone murmured.

Noah looked at the one who had spoken, swallowing, barely comprehending their words. He instinctively stepped after the closest person as they retreated to prevent the distance between them from widening.

A part of Noah was half-heartedly struggling to drag himself out of the haze that had enveloped him. It was a hopeless prospect, however; the warmth in his arm continually dragged his attention back within himself and to the terrible gaping emptiness within him that demanded to be filled. Nothing else mattered.

He locked eyes with the young man standing perfectly still just a few feet away.

That’s Brian, he thought distantly, but he found he didn’t care.

Noah closed the distance between them without warning and reached towards him, planning to drag him closer. He forgot his fingers weren’t functioning and only managed to slap weakly against his arm. Brian pushed him firmly away, sending him stumbling backwards into the fence.

Noah furrowed his brows, frustrated, feeling a lot less keen to go after his friend all of a sudden. Even that brief touch was enough for him to know instinctively that it would not be worth the effort. It would not gratify his hunger.

He looked around, disregarding the four people around him, knowing they were worthless. He needed to find someone else. He turned his gaze to the buildings of the main campus, barely visible behind rows of trees and the townhouse-style building they had been staying in. There would be plenty of people there. Full of eager thoughts, Noah started walking along the fence. He didn’t bother attempting to climb directly over it. He had barely managed with two functional arms; attempting it now would be a waste of time.

“Where is he going?” a worried voice asked behind him.

Now that he had a plan, he found his mind had cleared enough for him to recognize the question and respond appropriately. “I need to visit the campus to grab something to eat,” he said, smiling happily to himself. He didn’t bother to look back at them.

“Oh, man. Guys, he’s definitely gonna eat someone,” the same voice said.

Several pairs of footsteps rapidly approached him from behind. He ignored the sound until he was suddenly lurched backward and he glanced down to see a hand tugging on his left arm.

Without a second thought he snapped at the hand, causing it to swiftly recoil. He smiled and continued forward, nearly to the end of the fence, only for someone to tackle him bodily from behind. He collapsed promptly to the ground.

He tried to get up, but a weight on his ankles and heels rendered his struggles ineffective. As he realized he was trapped he grew angry, turning to see who was holding him down.

“Brian,” he growled. He should have expected that they wouldn’t understand. He urgently needed to eat; with every passing second he was acutely aware of his energy draining away to fuel the healing wound on his arm. Here he was withering away, and his own friend was trapping him, forcing it to happen.

“You need to stop,” Brian hissed. He looked over at May. “How long will it take him to calm down?”

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know! Compared to him, I barely had a scratch. I was never in danger of running off after people like this. I guess most of the hunger disappeared once the cuts finished healing, although it never completely went away.” She looked down at Noah with an unreadable expression.

Brian flipped over Noah’s arm, ignoring his friend’s pathetic efforts to escape. “Well, the wound definitely is still open. Who knows how long it will take for it to fully heal.”

Sophie sighed. “We should have just gone out the front door and walked around the fence into the woods. We couldn’t even get off the freaking property without everything going wrong.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hey, we’ll get past this. Right, Noah?”

Noah moaned pitifully, feeling as though his entire body were shriveling away into nothing.

“See? He’s doing great. We just need to wait a minute or two and we can get moving again.”

“He doesn’t look great,” Leah said, crouching down to shine the flashlight at his face. “Are you sure he’ll be okay if we just keep him here?”

“Are you seriously suggesting we let him go?”

Leah shrugged. “No. I don’t want to be responsible for some random kid getting eaten. And I don’t think Noah would feel great about that after the fact, either.”

“Yes, I would,” Noah said. “Let me go.”

“Shut up, Mr. Zombie,” Brian said.

“Hey, I think I heard that everyone on campus was staying out in the middle of the woods tonight,” Sophie said.

For a moment Noah sent an eager glance out into the woods, but almost immediately he turned back to glower at Sophie. “Liar.”

She sighed. “There might be someone out there.”

“No, there isn’t.”

Sophie put her hands on her hips. “Can’t you just get a hold of yourself? Think how terrible it would taste to bite someone. You’d regret it immediately.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve changed my mind. Let me go.”

“Don’t let him go,” May said.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Brian grumbled.

“Can’t we move a little further away from the road?” Leah asked. “Anyone driving by can see us crouching out here like a couple of guilty gremlins. Someone is bound to call campus safety. Or campus safety will see us themselves.”

“I have an idea,” Brian said suddenly. “Can one of you open my backpack? There are a few towels at the top right inside. I just need one.”

“Sure,” Leah said, quickly retrieving a medium-sized bath towel. “What are you going to do?”

“Watch,” he said. “And then tell me I’m a genius.”

Brian swiftly wrapped one of the towels around Noah’s face like a blindfold and tied it behind his head, then quickly stepped back

Noah gasped. “No,” he whispered, going motionless for a moment before bucking and thrashing with all of his remaining strength. His left hand scrambled at the towel without managing to dislodge it from his head. Brian watched calmly as his friend’s movements became weaker and weaker until he lay completely still.

“I feel like we just killed him,” Leah said, staring down at him.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just completely immobilized.”

Noah whimpered.

“Oh, shut up. This is for your own good. Leah, give May the flashlight and help me pick him up.”

They scooped him up in a two-man carry and retreated as quickly as they were able back away from the road. They reached the spot where they had initially crossed the fence and stopped there, staring into the dark woods. The trees were relatively dense, although there wasn’t much undergrowth, which would make traversing the land much easier. The worst obstacles they would face would be no worse than the occasional fallen tree.

“Are we seriously going to have to carry him all the way through?” Leah groused. “C’mon Noah, aren’t you better yet?”

“Yes! Take off the blindfold.”

She didn’t bother to respond, but after a moment she sighed and doubtfully checked his arm. Though it was noticeably smaller, the wound was still brightly visible against the pale flesh of his forearm.

“You realize we can see the injury right in front of us. We can tell you’re not healed.” She cast a second glance at his arm before looking up across him at Brian. “Has he always been so thin?”

“I’m wasting away,” Noah wailed.

Brian shrugged. “He just has to hold on until the cut closes up.”

They took their first steps into the woods. It was quite strange to be back under the trees in the dark for the second night in a row. May and Sophie held the flashlights. May was a lot better about keeping the ground directly under their feet illuminated, while Sophie kept pointing the light off into the trees at every little sound.

Eventually May looked over at Noah’s limply hanging form with a frown. “What if he gets injured again at some point? I mean, it’s bound to happen. It’ll probably happen to all of us. We can’t just infinitely walk around like this without eating anything; we’ll run out of energy eventually.”

“That’s an excellent point, thank you, May,” Noah said. “I completely agree that the only reasonable decision is to let me free. You can just wait for me here, I can be quick.”

“There’s got to be something else we can eat besides people,” May continued as if Noah hadn’t spoken. “It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s all calories, when it comes down to it.”

“Nothing about this blasted sickness makes sense,” Brian said. “I’ve given up trying to make sense of it.”

“Even if it’s outside our understanding, it has to be working on some sort of logic,” May said. “Everything that has occurred so far must have happened for a reason.”

“It’d be nice if Insight grabs someone else to experiment on and figures it out,” Brian said.

May gave him a disappointed look.

“Through gentle and humane research, of course,” he added hastily.