Pulse: Retaliation (Anisakis Nova Book 2) (12 page)

27 – Jean

Jean enjoyed being pregnant. That seemed embarrassing to admit for a while. It was unlike her to feel something so sentimental. But once she began noting other infected’s reactions around her, she realized her pregnancy was something to be proud of.

Everyone wanted to protect her. She couldn't smell it herself, but Adam remarked on her scent. It was like the sweat infected secreted during coma, but thicker and more potent. Jean reasoned her pregnancy was creating a stronger version to keep her safe.

When she walked the hallways of the clinic, her hands over her giant stomach, people followed. They smiled. Some, usually women, wanted to rub her stomach. It was the quintessential pregnancy experience. Now she knew what her friends were talking about.

Except...

There was pain. The spawn inside of her felt sharp when it moved. Whenever she felt too happy or too excited, it stabbed. It was correcting her behavior. Or punishing her. Terrorizing. It seemed to know when she was thinking negatively about it, about experiments she could to do it. That was when it hurt her the most.

And the nightmares. Jean slept most of the day and night which made this aspect of the pregnancy the most difficult. She had nightmares of the baby tearing through her uterus into her stomach and working its way into her lungs. Destroying her from the inside. Finally it climbed out of her mouth. For some reason she was always still alive and when she looked at it, she saw a miniature replica of herself. Sometimes it was Adam.

There were more abstract dreams. She zoomed around the earth in an out-of-body experience and could hone in on places when she wanted. She saw a foreign landscape, but knew it was earth. Everything was made of worms. It was a whitish, slimy world where buildings and roads, people and animals, were all made of millions of worms.

She didn't tell Adam about the dreams. They were, after all, dreams. Jean did not believe in dreams being visions of the future. It was the brain's way of processing information.

Yet each time she had them, she woke up panting and afraid. She wondered what she was doing, where she was. Why she'd willingly put this monster inside of her. Those feelings were fleeting, as the spawn always hurt her from the inside, distracting her.

28 – Ben Moreno

The Parasite revealed to him it was time to show the world his face. It was time for them to know Its plan and that Ben was here to deliver it. He'd accumulated well over a thousand infected in his army already, each wholly devoted to him. Even Mr. Ruchipip, who was often critical of Ben's abilities, was impressed. There were so many, they stayed on his property grounds outside. Ben couldn't fit all of them in his home.

As luck would have it, one infected woman named Nancy used to work at the local news station and said she could easily help him send out a broadcast. Ben wished they could do more than the local news, but he was sure his face would eventually be on all the TV channels. He knew everything about the infected attacking Seattle all the way across the country.

The other infected followed Ben, but they didn't see the big picture. To them, they were just part of a giant infected army that would dominate the world and take whatever they wanted. It was fine for them to think that. It kept them excited and aggressive. The truth was, Ben fully knew the infected could not be controlled. He knew that before the Parasite told him. Their chaos was what made them powerful. All he needed was for them to listen when he said attack. That was it.

How they did what he wanted did not matter. As long as no one opposed him, they could do whatever they wanted. It was what made Ben such a perfect leader. He did not oppress. He liberated. He freed. But, on the off chance someone did not want to participate, they would be put into the Mass.

And today he would make his announcement to the world. After spending weeks in his mansion, he was ready to spread the word of the Parasite and all it would do for mankind.

They piled into trucks and vans scavenged from town. There were two hundred of them in total—most of the army remained at his home or on other tasks—thirteen of which were ready to burst. Ben adored those who were chosen to carry the Parasite like that. They were an important part of the plan. He considered them almost as close to the Parasite as he was. They were mothers, all of them, bearing millions of lives into the world.

Two hundred was a lot, even when one considered how many guns and men the military had. With the exploders, which the uninfected feared deeply, it would be plenty to win the fight. In case it wasn't, Ben had been storing hostages for an occasion just like this one. They had the uninfected on leashes they'd drag around them for protection.

The plan was good. His intention was good.

Ben stared at himself in the mirror, going over what he would say one last time.

Time to go, Benny Ben
, Mr. Ruchipip said.
Show the world what we're made of.

***

Ben walked through the news station and smiled as he heard the orchestra of screams. No one could escape them. Either one of his people would find an uninfected, or the parasite itself, wriggling down the halls, would find them in their hiding spot. It was a thing of beauty and he was part of it.

The military opposition in Wilson was meager. They destroyed anything and everything that resembled a threat. Ben was so confident he planned on taking the rest of downtown, then the entire city. There were almost fifty thousand people he could enlist.

But first, the broadcast.

Nancy had the news crew at gunpoint as she forced them to set up everything. The process was more complicated than switching a broadcasting button on, but soon enough she gave Ben the OKAY. She sat him down at the pretty desk with the fake image behind him and turned on the lights.

He squinted, searching for the teleprompter she told him to look at. Not that he was reading a speech, but so he looked straight at the camera. He let the Parasite comfort him, writhe within his body and calm him.

"You are wondering who I am. It does not matter. Names do not matter. What matters is the Parasite. Humans won once before, but we shouldn't have. We are not in control and never will be, and
that
is why we must let the Parasite take us. It is here to change mankind, to level us. It is a being more powerful and in tune with the universe than we ever will be. If we let it into us, we can experience a fraction of that."

Ben took a deep breath. Both the infected and remaining uninfected stared at him as he spoke.

"If you are listening to this, I know, deep in your heart you feel it. You do not want to struggle against it any longer. The feeling of desperation, or fear...it can all go away. As people of the Parasite, we are all equal. The ones who carry thousands of the Parasite within their bellies, the unrefined, the frenzied, the intelligent; they all are equal. We are here to usher in a new world where everyone is free, truly free. The Parasite is the zenith of perfection and by remaining uninfected, you are weak and burdened.

"But to be free, we must be one, and to be one there can be no disagreement." Ben stood and motioned to the hostages. "Bring them over."

His people lined them up. One infected, his chest and stomach moments away from bursting, stood behind them.

"We will infect every person on this entire planet." Ben took a knife offered to him by Nancy. He poised it over the man's huge stomach. "We begin our mission today."

29 – The Infected

Washington State: 59% Infected

After hearing about the gangs of infected abducting people, Leigh and his best friend Sluggo decided to lay low. In the basement of his uncle's house, life felt pretty much the same. They played videogames, smoked a bit of weed, ate. It was a great hangout and, besides the occasional screaming or gunfire outside, it was cool.

Leigh didn't know where his parents went—they were missing like, day four of the apocalypse—but didn't care. They were jerks anyway. No more school, no more gym. Fuck, he hated gym class so much it made him want to kill someone.

When the announcement that the infection was starting again popped up on the TV, Leigh didn't care that much. He was okay the first time around. He hung out in his uncle's house and they had a great time. Leigh invited Sluggo over to chill and, once the curfews started, Sluggo decided to stay.

Plus, their neighborhood wasn’t too close to where the crazy shit was going down in the Seattle area. Leigh figured what he was hearing outside wasn’t bad compared to what it could be. They’d be all right.

Leigh's uncle never came back. That worried him, but not enough to go looking for him. Eventually Leigh stopped caring where he was. It wasn't uncommon for people in his family to jump ship.

Thing was, Leigh and Sluggo hadn't thought things out. They didn't realize how little food they had or how quickly a person became dehydrated. If they'd tried to get food or water before the curfew started, maybe they'd be better off. But they thought the box of food was enough and were starving to death and, worst of all, desperate.

Sluggo had a baseball bat and Leigh a knife from the kitchen. They left the house to go to a rations center. They made it four blocks from their house when the gang saw them.

It made their blood run cold. There were at least fifteen of them, twitching and spastic, howling and laughing maniacally. Some had guns, others with tire irons or pieces of wood.

And they saw the guys right away. The horde surged on them. Sluggo and Leigh ran back to the house, but were hungry and fatigued. The chase was short-lived.

Leigh hoped for a fast death. He knew the infected did really gross stuff sometimes. Huddled in a little ball, as they kicked him over and over, he was glad this seemed to be the extent of what they'd do.

"Hey!" one shouted, and the beating stopped. "We gotta take these back to Dr. Baker."

"Nooo-o-o. We never get any f-fun. Let's keep these ones, o-okay?"

The first one made an exaggerated
hmmmm
. "Yeah, yeah. Hehe, string them up like puppets? Make them dance?"

Around him, all the crowd started chanting. "String them up! String them up!"

They dragged Leigh and Sluggo by their feet. The rough asphalt shredded his back. He felt blood and dirt and who knows what else accumulating in the wounds. Sluggo was crying, long wails that made Leigh even more afraid.

They reached an intersection where the infected descended on them, tying ropes around their hands and feet.

They'd done this before
, Leigh thought, and it made him feel even sicker.

Then suddenly he was in the air, hoisted up. Hot, searing pain coursed through his arms and legs as the ropes pulled them at odd angles. Through swollen eyes he spotted a handful of infected below, holding on to the ropes. Dazed, he scanned the neighboring houses. Someone would save them, wouldn’t they?

He saw a woman’s face watching from a small second story window. When Leigh tried to shout for help, his voice came out as a meager squeak.

"Make them dance!" one shouted. The rest joined in.

Leigh felt like his limbs would tear off his body at any second. The infected tugged each rope separately. He was a puppet. He was a fucking puppet.

The infected laughed and danced around him. It drowned out the sound of Sluggo's screaming, even his own. Then the crazy people lowered them so they could douse them in gasoline. After they were hoisted into the air again, the infected tossed matches at Leigh and Sluggo until they finally took light.

30 – Mandy Sillvers

From the attic window, Mandy watched the crazy people hang and burn two teenage boys. She bit her hand to stop herself from making any noise. She couldn't look away. While most of them partook in the murder, others were dragging people from their homes and shoving them into a truck. It was a full scale attack against the uninfected.

They checked her house. If she hadn't been in the attic, laying dead still, they might have found her and ended her, too. She heard motion and shouting in the direction of her bedroom where they found the bodies. Apparently they weren't too concerned with the death of their own because they left quickly.

She'd seen many things from her house, but the burning topped it. The brutality of it was sickening. It made her even happier she slit the throats of the ones in her bed, if this was what they were capable of.

Eventually the infected wandered away down the empty street in search of more victims. The white moving truck slowly trailed behind them. Mandy found herself imagining what it was like to be in there; the fear, the darkness.

She laid low in the attic, her new hiding spot, not going into the second story for anything until she had to. When she did, she drank as much water as she could and filled up her canteen before returning.  She scrounged up a few cans of food from the kitchen and rationed them so she wouldn't have to use her bug-out bag food.

Tuna, pickled beets, green beans. It wasn't too bad. She couldn't complain. The beets she grew and pickled herself the previous summer.

What she needed was some way of knowing the state of affairs in the world. Was this isolated to Washington? Was there somewhere safe she could go? She wondered if martial law had been enacted, or how the government was handling things on a state and nation level.

Mandy wasn't sure how she'd ever find out. There was no electricity in the house. Whatever knocked down the bunker power did so for the whole block from what she could tell. It meant she needed to leave her safe spot and get answers.

She waited until it was dark before leaving. She stuck to neighbors' backyards so she wouldn't have to use the main road. It meant climbing over fences, but it seemed safer to her.

Not all the houses she passed were in as bad shape as hers. Some showed no signs of damage. Mandy stopped at those, peering in through windows to see if she could spot anything useful; people, electricity, resources. Nothing ever seemed lucrative enough to enter for.

After walking for two blocks, she spotted the first streetlight. Its warm amber glow seemed intimidating rather than reassuring. Mandy went to the house it was in front of and looked through the sliding glass door.

Inside, the house was dark. As she kept scanning, she saw a tiny orange light on a TV. Power.

But the door was locked. She checked the windows, and they were locked, too.

Mandy looked up. There were three second story windows and one of them was cracked. It was false hope more than anything. The sides of the house were sheer and she couldn't climb it. Better to search the next house than make noise breaking this one.

The next one had a back door that was unlocked but shut. Mandy wasn't sure if that was good or bad. She slipped in, holding her breath as she took in the sounds of the house.

Nothing but her own heartbeat thundering in her chest. The microwave clock read 2:30am. A fancy blender had a bright blue screen that boasted 542 uses. She searched the cabinets and found stacks of MREs and freeze dried foods, feeling around and squinting to find what she needed. It was surprising to find those kinds of supplies in a house.

Then one thing stood out; a small metal case labeled MAC. Mandy opened and saw four needles and a tiny vial. There were administering directions printed on the inner case.

1. Must be administered prior to Stage 3 (coma).

2. Swab arm and inject.

3. Keep host restrained for 24 hours after injection.

She held the case to the blender screen to read. A spark of hope ignited within her. The MAC was for the parasite. The existence of a cure was a good sign. She put it in her front pocket, its presence reassuring. Mandy tore open a bag of dried strawberries, wolfing down a handful before stowing the rest of the bag in her backpack. The MREs made more sense now. Maybe the state distributed food along with the MAC.

The house had a similar layout to her own. She spotted a living room. TV was intact. No computer, no tablets lying around. Mandy searched the entire first story and found nothing of use, and no signs of life. The front door was shut and locked. It seemed normal, like whoever lived there had just stepped out for a moment.

Upstairs, there was no computer. Mandy found it hard to believe there was no computer, no sign of a laptop or anything. It left her with two options: turn on the TV or find another house with a computer.

Using the TV, located far from the street, seemed like the best option. She'd turn it on for a second, just to see if it even worked.

She went back downstairs and made sure all the blinds were closed. There was a patchwork blanket on the couch which she draped over the TV, then turned it on. She formed a tent of blanket between her and the screen, hoping it would help reduce the glow. She was greeted with static. Mandy flicked through the channels rapidly, stopping the second she saw footage.

It was an emergency broadcast, stating hospitals had been attacked. It listed places not to go, but didn't list where she
should
go. Mandy turned it off, not daring to keep the bright screen on any longer. The list of hot zones was burned into her mind. She'd avoid them.

Then she heard the first knock on the door. It was gentle, hesitant. Mandy froze, hoping it was just her imagination.

"Hello?" a voice came, muffled.

Did it sound normal? One word wasn't enough to tell. She'd heard the crazy infected people before, and they usually sounded...well, crazy. She waited.

This time the doorbell rang. Mandy flinched, the remote falling from her hand and clattering to the floor. She grabbed the M16, flicking off the safety in one swift motion. Something about the normalcy of the scene, a polite knocking and question, disturbed her.

"H-h-hey there. Anyone innnnn there?" The voice was losing control. "It's the fucking m-m-milk man, now open up!"

The knocking turned into banging, then multiple fists, then glass was shattering. Mandy spun, running for the back door.

And they were there. Drooling and snarling, grins on their faces. Six infected, grabbing her all at once. Mandy raised the gun and fired, but they had her by surprise and her first shot only grazed one of them. She barreled through them instead, hoping to make a run for it and use brute force to escape.

One grabbed her backpack and yanked her hard. Mandy fell flat on her back, but she wasn't going down without a fight. She fought and kicked, seizing opportune moments to strike. She slammed the butt of her rifle in one of their head's. A satisfying
crack!
brought him to the ground. The others recoiled, startled by the unexpected hit. Mandy rolled away from them and onto her knees, bringing up the gun again. They were grouped close together and clumsy, making for easy targets now that she was oriented.

She fired five shots into the group, most of them finding their mark in the same one she hit with the rifle. The last shot went straight through his eye, sending a burst of blood out the back of his head. The remaining five stared at her for a split second before taking action.

"FUCK!" One screamed, running straight towards her.

Mandy fired again, getting two perfect shots at the infected's torso. It didn't stop him.
It didn't stop him
. Mandy panicked and unloaded the rest of the magazine, but the infected's strength was inhuman. He tackled her, his full body weight bearing down on her. 

Her rifle was snatched out of her hands the instant he rolled off her. She felt blood soaking through her jacket.

"Pretty! Want her for myself!" a man shouted as he grabbed at her bottom. Another unzipped her jacket and was about to go for her chest when a woman slapped both the gropers away. They finally had her restrained, each one holding a limb.

"No touching!" This was from a woman with missing patches of hair. The one her first shot grazed. "Dr. Baker said put them in the trucks, so we put them in the fucking trucks, you dumb fuck!"

Another giggled. "You rhymed."

"Whatever you truck fuck..." the woman shook her head violently, slapping her own face. "Dumb fuck! Get her bag!"

"She killed those...those guys..."

An older man who was drooling over Mandy grinned. His teeth had been filed down to bloody, chipped spikes. "I say we punish her. Teach her a lesson."

The woman, perhaps the one in charge, kicked the man who spoke as he held Mandy down. "You stupid ass, do you even know their names? It doesn't matter. Get her in the truck."

They hauled Mandy up and tore her backpack off and stripped her of her sidearm.

As they tossed her into the back of a van, Mandy didn't have to wonder what the fear and darkness would be like anymore.