Insatiable Pt. 1

[JasonBR]

 Insatiable Pt. 1

 

Adrian kneeled alone in the woods. In front of him lay the corpse of a now unidentifiable man. Next to him lay Adrian’s bat, now covered in blood. The face of the man had been beaten into a crimson pulp, and now his arms were being torn apart and eaten--and not by infected. He looked out over the nearby town of Vybor. He thought it stupid to feed here, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

As he ate, Adrian listened for the sounds around him. Birds chirping away carefree; twigs snapping as small rodents and nearby infected carelessly droned their semi-lifeless bodies aimlessly; a slow, unbalanced pace came up behind him. Adrian knew it was a person. Whoever it was walked with a limp. He felt the barrel of a rifle pressed against his head before he could react differently. His hands dropped the arm and rose into the air.

“Doctor” Alexander Camille was standing behind him with a VSS leveled to the back of his head. Adrian muttered to himself as Alex spoke.

“Care to explain who this poor bastard was?”

His tone was sharp. He pushed the barrel harder into the back of Adrians head. As a precaution, Alex kicked Adrians bat away from him. As he did, he winced in pain from putting pressure on his right leg.

“Didn’t get his name. I needed meat Doctor, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t a friend of yours,” Adrian replied, reaching into his jacket; Alex pressed the barrel into him harder.

“Relax, I’m grabbing something to wipe my hands off.”

Adrian grabbed a rag from his jacket and wiped the man’s blood off his hands and mouth. Alex spoke again, moving the barrel back from his head, but keeping the gun raised, his prosthetic leveled against the front of tiny magazine for support.

“You can’t go feeding your addiction this close to camp. Can you imagine what people would think if they saw you? If it was this easy for me to come across you, what would happen if someone saw you who didn’t know about what you are?”

Adrian gritted his teeth at the comment and replied sharply.

“What I am? What I am is a victim of circumstance. Do you think I like this? Do you think I want to kill people for food? You said it yourself. It’s an addiction, a disorder. I can’t control it.” Adrian’s tone seemed genuine--whether Alex believed him or not was a different story.

Alex paused for a moment, lowering the gun slightly. Looking over his shoulder, Adrian saw this and spun, grabbing the barrel of the rifle, taking it from the doctor’s hands and stepping back.

Adrian leveled the gun to Alex’s chest and held it for a moment as the doctor’s arms rose up in defiant surrender. His eyes narrowed indignantly; Adrian pressed the magazine release and ejected the round from the chamber, tossing the mag aside and handing his rifle back to him.

“If you’re going to talk to me, it’s going to be face to face, and without guns.”

Alex took his rifle and rest it in the backpack strap, sighing as he did so.

“Fine… without guns.” Alex checked the perimeter around them once again. “Why here? Why so close to the camp? You that insatiable?”

“Like I said, I needed to eat. If it makes it better at all, he stole a few things from your camp. Feel free to take them off his corpse. Only reason I did it here was because I had no other options. Would you rather me unload into a crowd of survivors, just because I didn’t kill this one lonely survivor?”

Alex replied quickly, as if he had a response prepared.

“I would rather one person die than ten, but I would also rather not be accused of cannibalism or harboring them. Society, or what’s left of it, tends to see you people as some of the worst kind of people out there.”

“No trial, no case for reason. People don’t listen to why we are the way we are. You look at us as if we are sub-human, but we’re just as human as you. Do you think I enjoy being a cannibal, Alex?”

“You haven’t given me a reason to think otherwise.”

“I hate killing to eat. I hate having to fight to make sure I don’t gun down a crowd of people without reason. I want to have one night where... the things I’ve done to survive... don’t weigh me down, and suffocate me. This isn’t something I enjoy living with! It’s what I had to do to survive.”

“We’ve all done bad things to survive, but cannibalism is something most people can’t and don’t forgive.”

“Then why didn’t you kill me as soon as you realized what I do? Why didn’t you kill me now?”

As Alex spoke, Adrian leaned down and grabbed his bat off the dirt and flicked the blood from it.

“For the same reason I told you as soon as I had my suspicions.” Once he began reaching for the bat, Alex also leaned down, returning the VSS magazine to its home in the gun, taking a step back. “You’re not incurable. You’re not insatiable. You just chose the wrong meal one day, and you’re living with the consequences. Your brain is fighting off a nearly incurable neurological disorder as the proteins from other men’s flesh are ingested into your bloodstream.”

“In English, Doc, we all didn’t go to Harvard,” Adrian blurted out as he used the bloodied rag to wipe some of the excess blood off of his bat.

“Johns Hopkins,” Alex retorted. “But you said it yourself--” He pointed with the barrel of his rifle at the body laying on the ground, already beginning to give off a stench of death. It seemed neither of them were bothered by it. “You hate being this way. You trying to tell me you want to fight this?”

Adrian stared back at the body, as if he was trying to fight back not simply wanting to lean back down and continue gnawing at him as they spoke.

“Of course I do.”

“Then step one is leaving this body to its own devices. Go grab a shovel from the camp and come back. The least we can do for this poor unfortunate man is give him a proper burial.” He had a callous, sing-songy tone to his voice. It seemed Alex cared just as little about the man laying in the dirt with his face beaten in and chunks of his flesh missing as Adrian did.

“If I walk down there you’re  coming with me. I don’t particularly feel like taking an SP-6 to the back.”

“Fine then, lets go.”

Alex began to limp towards the compound, leading the way there. As they walked, Adrian lagged behind, his thoughts running wild. Is he just trying to throw me under the bus? Will this really all be over? Should I even try to fix this addiction? Can I trust him?

They continued their walk to the compound and Adrian grabbed a shovel and began to walk back to the body. Alex continued to lead the way as they walked. Adrian stopped walking for a moment and spoke.

“Alex?”

“What?”

“If you ever point a gun at me again, it will be the last time you can hold one.”

Alex paused for a second, as if he was deciding how to react.

“I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll never point a gun at you again so long as you never pull one out of my hands again.”

Adrian dug a small grave for the body in silence, rolling it unceremoniously into the grave and piling the dirt back on top. Alex looked into the distance, casually overlooking the compound and the city to its west. He considered firing off a round at an infected that was slowly fumbling its way across the field, but decided against it--stealth was a necessity, considering their dead “friend.” When he was finished, Adrian spoke again.

“What the Hell am I gonna do, Alex?” He sounded labored and upset, but this was likely because of the shovelling he had just done.

Alex turned slowly, staring at him from the side of his head.

“You stop.”

“Call me a conspiracy fuckin’ theorist but I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Nothing in this world is simple anymore. But if you don’t take control of yourself now, your mind will take control of you--and someone will have to stop you.” A more paranoid man could have taken that as a threat. “Come speak to me later tonight. We’ll talk more about how to… fix you.”

Alex unceremoniously pulled his trademark bottle of painkillers from his backpack’s pouch closest to his right hand, shaking a tiny, light blue capsule out onto his tongue. He grimaced at the medically unpalatable taste as he lurched his head back to swallow it, capping the bottle and returning it to his backpack. Adrian hoisted the shovel onto his shoulder, walking back down toward the compound.

“Right… ‘fix’ me. Good luck, Doc.”