Children of the Plague

Chapter Sixteen: The Other You

That worked. Now what?

“Press him,” John said. “Don’t give him time to think.

As if in answer to her question, the husk tackled Mitch, knocking him onto his side. She landed on top of him, trying to rip his flesh away with her bare hands, and savagely biting his arm. Now it was his turn to scream.

I guess that’ll keep the pressure on.

Lanni ran to join the melee, vaulting one of the boxes and leaping with a flying kick. She knocked the husk off of Mitch with a firm kick to its shoulder. It was more a shove than a kick, really, but it did the job.

The husk quickly regained her feet and searched frantically around the room, probably for an escape. She didn’t seem to notice the red, foot-shaped burn on her shoulder where Lanni’s touch destroyed the nanites in her skin. With such a high ratio, the wound would heal before she could say ‘ouch.’

Mitch, on the other hand, clutched his bleeding arm. He rocked back and forth like a toddler with a splinter, spewing a torrent of profanity that would have impressed even her uncle Jimmy. His high-pitched, squealing voice gave it a decidedly comical edge.

“What’s the matter with you, Mitchell? Let me see your arm,” she said.

He tenderly peeled his hand away, like he expected his arm to fall off if he let go.

Still a few feet away, Lanni leaned forward for a closer look. Mitch watched her face for her pronouncement of his condition.

Good grief. Even I am a bigger man than that.

Disgusted as much by his weakness as his treatment of the cowering husk-woman, she kicked his wounded shoulder about as hard as she had the husk’s. His wail and the ensuing prayer to the gods of vulgarity made her smile.

“Is that really necessary? I’ve seen worse hangnails.”

“I’m sorry, Lanni,” he said. His speaking voice was nearly as feminine as his screams. “Gah! That f… really hurts! I’m sorry. I… know you don’t like swearing. She f… That monster bit me!”

She had already tuned him out. Had she heard him right?

He said my name! He knows me. He even knows I don’t like swearing.

His knowing wink and the warning when she woke up in the cart made more sense. Barely. She still didn’t see how it was possible. She had seen him around, of course, but had certainly never met or spoken with him.

“How do you know my name?” she asked, forgetting that he had just bludgeoned a woman in front of her.

He stopped rocking and grumbling and looked up at her. His puzzled expression turned to fear, and he started stammering.

“I didn’t. I don’t… I didn’t say…” He collapsed onto his back and raised his arms towards the ceiling in a dramatic gesture of desperation. “Ah, Christ! She opened the f-- fricking door. How was I supposed to know?” he asked, addressing the room.

“I don’t have time for this,” Lanni said, mostly to herself. “Get up and quit crying. I’m the teenage girl, here, not you. What are you, like forty or something? Get up!”

The husk backed a few paces towards the only hallway leading from the room, but apparently didn’t like that option. She scooted by with her back to the wall in the opposite direction, passing within a few feet of Lanni and Mitch, and vanished into the only cell on that wall with an open door.

Mitch refused Lanni’s hand, and stood up on his own. “I didn’t know it was you. How could I? He said you could never find this place.” Blood flowed freely through his fingers as he clutched his wounded arm.