“Brains,” I rasped through the blood and flesh in my mouth. I turned and spat a gobbet of who-knew-what onto the floor. “He needs brains right now,” I said, louder. I heard the door open and close, but I didn’t take my eyes away from the bloodied man in front of me. A second later something cool and slippery was pressed into my hand. I didn’t need to look down to see what it was. Right now my parasite was working overtime, doing what needed to be done. I was a passenger in my own body at this point.
I put a large hunk of brain into my mouth, then leaned over Philip and started biting him again—but this time not trying to damage him. Somehow I knew what was going on—now I was transferring the necessary proteins over to Philip along with the colonizing spores, using the previous wounds as pathways. I felt like a mother bird, chewing the brains up to mush then spitting them out into Philip’s body. A part of me knew how unbelievably disgusting this was, but I kept going, chewing, biting, spitting.
Philip took a sudden gurgling breath, and I paused. The bites were starting to close up. I shifted to where I was sitting against the wall and pulled Philip to me, cradling him against me. Now I began to feed the brains to him directly, placing small hunks into his mouth. He shuddered as the first piece hit his tongue, but then his own newfound instinct took over and he swallowed it down. I continued to feed him, watching as the wounds healed before my eyes like some sort of time-lapse film.
His eyes blearily opened after the last bite. “Now you gotta sleep,” I told him, or rather, my parasite told me to tell him. Because that was how it worked, I instinctively knew now. Infect the new zombie, feed it, then let it sleep while the parasite does its thing and gets all happy and settled in its new home.
An oddly content smile curved his mouth, then his eyes drifted closed again. He leaned his head against my shoulder and slept like that while I held him, the two of us surrounded by a pool of his blood.
I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew someone was trying to pull Philip from my grasp. I jerked awake and clutched him tightly to me.
“No,” I gasped. “Get away. He needs to stay with me.”
The guard didn’t release Philip’s arm. This was the one with the too-perfect eyebrows. “I need to take him. Get him checked out.”
“He’s fine!” I insisted, curling my lip. “They can check him out right here.”
His eyes hardened. “That’s not going to happen.” He tried again to pull Philip’s limp body from me, and I let out a growl—a deep throbbing sound I had no idea I could make.
The guard dropped Philip’s hand and jumped back, but then his mouth tightened into a thin line and he pulled a Taser from his belt. Ah, shit, this is gonna suck. Marcus had once described being tasered—which he’d had to experience in order to carry one on duty. His words: “That shit fucking hurts. If anyone ever tells you to comply or be tasered, you’d better fucking comply!”
But I wouldn’t…couldn’t…comply with this. All I knew was that Philip needed to stay with me a while longer.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the feel of the metal probes shooting into my skin, but before the guard could fire, Dr. Charish’s voice came over the speaker. “Stand down. Leave the subject as he is. We’ll come in to get our samples.”
Relieved, I opened my eyes and resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at the guard with the Taser. He looked more than willing to “accidentally” tase me. However, he stepped back, eyeing me with undisguised distaste. For the first time I realized that Philip and I weren’t exactly a pleasant sight. None of the blood had been cleaned up, and it was starting to congeal to a sticky mess. I swiped at my face with the back of one hand, grimacing as a thick smear of drying blood came away with it. I definitely looked like a monster now, I was sure of it.
Dr. Charish entered, flanked by two more guards. I quickly catalogued them—one had gorgeous blue eyes, and the other had a nose that had clearly been broken a few times.
“Angel, that was absolutely amazing,” she said, eyes shining with a fervor that seemed obscene considering the level of gore present in the room. “The way the parasite works is a study in brilliance. This…this is the work of a lifetime.” She dropped to a crouch beside me, ignoring the fuck off, bitch look I gave her. “I need to get samples from you both now.” She tilted her head. “Tell me, is your reluctance to let Philip go driven by the parasite? Does it feel like an instinctive need, or do you simply not want to be left alone in here?”
“Get the fuck away from us, you psycho bitch,” I snarled.
She reached a hand to Philip, then had to backpedal as I took a swing at her. “Fascinating,” she said with a breathless chuckle. “An attachment between parent and child would explain a great deal, such as why Marcus is so taken with you.”
I set Philip down and leaped over him in an explosive move that could only be accomplished with zombie super speed, and in the next breath I was on Dr. Charish with my hands around her throat.
Aaaaanndd…the next breath after that, I learned just how much it hurt to be tasered.
An eternity or so later the searing pain stopped. I moaned on the floor, distantly aware of a guard helping Dr. Charish to her feet. Shivers of pain echoed through my body, and I could still feel two sharp points where the probes had embedded themselves into my lower back.
“Angel, please,” Dr. Charish said, coughing a bit as she straightened her clothing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I let out a dry laugh. “A bit late for that, don’t you think?” Before I could think about it too much I grabbed the two wires and yanked the probes out of my skin. Pain flared briefly, but thankfully settled within a couple of seconds as my parasite worked to repair the damage. That’s a good little parasite, I silently crooned. Too bad a mild jab of hunger came along with the decrease in pain.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said as I crabbed my way back toward Philip. “Why’d you have Ed kill those other zombies? Why not kidnap them the way you did me?”
“I had to prove my research had merit before I could get investors to commit the sort of risk and resources that holding a live specimen would entail,” she explained. “And, if you must know, I had actually intended to have Ed obtain a live zombie for us. But he inexplicably decided to drop out of sight before I could do so.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You called in the anonymous tip about him being the serial killer.”
“Yes. I couldn’t be sure what he was up to, and it was necessary to keep him out of the way. But, in all fairness, he was the serial killer,” she pointed out. “Now hold still while I get samples from both of you.” She cocked her head and gave me a thin smile. “Unless you enjoyed the Taser?”
I grudgingly extended my arm.
“You regrew the bodies from the heads he gave you,” I said.
“Just the one so far,” she corrected absently as she slid the needle into my vein and carefully drew the syringe until it was full of blood. “It takes an enormous amount of brains—and time—for the parasite to regenerate that much tissue.” She pulled the needle free and stuck a piece of gauze on the puncture site.