Page 82 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Bang.
Loud enough that Crane’s hearing howls into static, obliterates everything else, sends him reeling.
Tammy’s torso rips open. Gut shot, slug, close range. It’s a monstrosity. Takes a chunk of meat out of her body and flings it across the manager’s office. Obliterates the lower ribs, shreds the flesh, grinds the organs into a useless pulp.
Chuck-chuck.
Tammy hits the ground. Gurgling. The woman who took him in and protected him, the woman he called Ma, even though he never said it out loud, the woman who refused to help him just because the hive told herno.She splutters.
Bang.
Second shot. Stagger’s shoulder disintegrates. It doesn’t stop him. The arm goes limp and writhing worms screech away from the wound, and Levi’s head hits the door again. There’s no noise except the screaming in Crane’s ears, but it has to be a wet, meaty sound, like something shattered. A crunch.
This place is going to eat itself alive. Crane tastes gunpowder. His baby’s head lolls against his breast, the neck wound gaping open into a dark mouth. He tries to use Tammy’s shoulder as a prop to get on his feet, but holding his daughter, the ruined fingers on his left hand, he can’t get it. He slips.
Chuck-chuck bang.
The third slug hits home. Stagger’s skull splits. Half of it is gone. His head a waning moon of worm pieces and bone.
Stagger reels back. Stumbles, tries to hold his dripping, collapsing head up. Can’t. Half a worm falls out of the crevice chewed into his brain and thumps onto the ground. Stagger crawls on his hands andknees for only a second, remaining eye darting around like it can see the damage if it just strains enough.
The shotgun slumps to the ground, out of Levi’s hands.
Crane watches Stagger die on the bloody, freezing floor. Can’t get to him before he sags into the nest of blankets as if attempting to crawl underneath them after a nightmare. The worms writhe in confusion. The body is abandoned, destroyed, useless. The man behind it is gone.
Maybe it was a mercy. Maybe that body wasn’t Stagger’s body anymore—the hive moving him without him, manually forcing each joint and muscle. Or maybe the man was still there under the worms, hoping there was possibly, please god, a way out. Perhaps he hoped that if he sat down with Crane long enough, if they used enough knives, they could take out all the parasites one by one. At least have the chance to find out if his body could function without them, let his body be his own again.
Crane is sorry he couldn’t help.
He gets one foot under himself.
Then another.
Crane, finally standing, holding the baby,hisbaby, looks down at Levi.
Levi looks up at him.
Part of his head is dented, Crane realizes. Like Sean’s. Levi is trying to get the shotgun back into his hands, but he keeps fumbling it. Struggling. Making these ugly noises in the back of his throat.
Crane slides the shotgun away with his toe. Levi slaps his hand after it and succeeds only in rolling onto his side. God, it’s bad. The skull is cracked.
What does Levi see, looking up at him like this? A naked, mutilated woman, or the man he did this to?
Not that it matters much anymore.
Crane casts around the room for the safest place to leave his daughter before settling her snuggly against Stagger’s side. Stagger isn’t moving anymore, except for the worms, all trying to figure out what to do.There, Crane thinks, tucking her by Stagger’s hip.Take care of her for me.
He picks up the shotgun.
Levi taught him how to use this, once upon a time. Behind the gas station. A cigarette dangling from Levi’s mouth, smiling as he pushed each shell into the gun and handed it off. The model holds six shells plus one. Levi used only three. Crane is trembling as he lifts it up, props it up against his chest, has to use his broken hand to pull back the action.
Shit. He remembered this being easier than it was. He can’t get it all the way back before he has to release it. There’s a quietchunksound. That’s not right.
Levi slurs out something that might be, “Jammed.”
The sliding part, the forestock he thinks, isn’t sitting right. He pulls the bolt back to open the chamber, finds a shell stuck halfway in. That’s not—no. That’s not supposed to happen. He shoves a finger in to get it unstuck but he’s shaking too hard, can’t get any leverage on it.
“Jammed,” Levi says again, and he’s grinning, and there’s blood all over his teeth.
