Seeds Of Hunger

Chapter 4: Squirm

"All officers, All officers, please report to the station immediately!" Carter's handheld radio, along with the emergency sirens, nudged the already half awake Carter to full alertness.

"What the hell?" Carter had never heard that over the radio. As Carter swung his legs out of the bed, his phone started ringing. "Corporal Carter." He stated, trying not to sound groggy.

"Did I wake you, Mirado?" Casey responded sounding exactly as Carter did. He must have been asleep too, Carter realized.

"No, I've been tossing and turning until the sirens went. Better suit up." Carter said as he put the phone on speaker and grabbed his shirt. "Station's calling everyone in. Haven't seen this happen."

"Yeah, must be pretty bad if they call the entire P.D. in." Casey agreed, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. Carter heard the rustling of pants and the clang of the belt buckle.

"Right. I'll finish up here and meet you down there. Be careful." Carter said, struggling into his own pants.

"Right back at ya." Casey disconnected. Carter buckled his belt and made sure his Glock had a round chambered before grabbing his extra magazines. The flat black magazine held seventeen rounds and if he topped the mag off after chambering a round, he had eighteen. Carter couldn't shake the feeling that something horrible had happened as he grabbed his keys.

Carter was halfway to the station when Rolf called him, "Morning Rolf. What's happening?" Carter asked as he slowed the car to a stop at a red-light.

"I need you to go to a Dr. Allen Rich's place and talk to his about his co-worker, a Dr. Michelle Markarth. She just ate the doctor who was taking care of her at John Hopkins." Rolf stated, matter of factly.

Carter, slammed on the brakes making the tires screech as he tried to grasp what he was just told, "Sergeant, can you repeat that? It sounded like you said she ATE a doctor..?" Carter made sure he was clear before pulling back onto the main road.

"You heard right, Mirado. Get your ass over there. I'm sending Casey with you as backup. We need more information and Rich is the only one who's been in contact with the subject. Stay alert and be safe. If we need you, i'll buzz ya." The line went dead before Carter could ask, "Need help with what?"

Casey was there first, Carter saw, the blue lights on his cruiser bathing the house in a bluish-reddish glow.

"Turn those off before you give someone a seizure. Have you talked to him yet?" Carter asked as he walked toward Casey.

"Negative. I was told by Rolf to wait for ya before we talked to the doc." Casey said as both of the officers walked to the front porch. Carter noted that the house was overdue for some yardwork. The grass needed to be cut and the weeds had overtaken a once nice flowerbed. The porch could use a good pressure washing and the sidings of the house had lost most of its color through weather and age.

"No lights on, always a good sign." Carter noted, reaching for the door bell. The door swung open, revealing a lanky, balding man dressed in a bath robe who had blisters all over his body and missing chucks of his right arm.

"Jesus!" Carter said backing away. "Dr. Rich what the hell..?"

"I imagine I looked messed up right now. There are important things I have to tell you boys. Come in, quickly!" Rich ushered the officers in closing the door behind them. "What I have to say is very important boys. I've heard what happened to Markarth. Shame really, our research was going places. Can I offer you boys a drink?" Rich struggled to move from the door to the couch and didn't look like he would be able to move from it again.

"Dr. Rich, what happened to you? What the hell happened to Markarth?" Casey asked trying to keep as much distance as possible.

"We made a new discovery. A new kind of flower that we thought might hold the answer to Alzheimer's disease. The pollen it produces has enough of the chemicals needed to reactivate brain functions. It worked all the time every time of mice but the damn rodents kept feasting on each other. We should've taken that as a sign but we were too caught up in our research. About two days ago, as I progressed worse and worse, I took a sample of the pollen and held it under UV light. What I found were parasites. Living, writhing parasites. Millions of them on a sample of pollen. On a single spec of pollen are hundreds of thousands of them." Rich explained, struggling to explain, Carter saw.

"What does this have to do with your associate, Markarth?" Casey asked, grimacing.

"My speculation is that when the spores get inside a suitable host, such as us, they being to hatch and replicate. After that they start feeding," Rich held up his rotting arm as evidence, "I can feel them moving inside my head and I'm losing to them. I can feel my consciousness slip away. Probably within the next hour, I'll be dead. My body is falling apart, I can't fight it any longer."

"So then you know that Markarth has died and that she took a chunk out of the doctor that was caring for her." Carter asked, half of it a statement.

"My god... in that case when I die I need you to shoot me." Rich used the last of his strength to go into his bedroom and came back with a used pistol. "This is the same pistol I carried with me during my stay in Vietnam." Rich held it out to Carter. Carter took it and recognized it as the pistol his grandfather had kept from World War 2. It was a old Colt 1911 in .45ACP. The finish had worn off and had a nice patina on the pistol.

"The parasites are using us to reproduce and spread. If they can revitalize brain function, then a hit to the head, or rather a bullet, should stop the infection from spreading." Rich started coughing and blood ran down his chin.

Carter stuck the .45 in the small of his back, and kneeled down in front of the dying doctor, "How many people were exposed to the pollen?"

Rich's eyes fluttered as he answered, "Our whole department was working on the research. There are two hundred people that could have possibly been exposed. Maybe more if the pollen had latched onto their clothing. You need to alert your superiors about this. I...wish...there...was....more..." Rich started to convulse and went lack. His eyes, still open became glossy. Carter thought he saw something squirm in the now clouded eyes. He backed away and closed the doctor's eyes before standing up.

"We need to alert the station. If there were that many people, then the whole city could be infected in a matter of hours." Carter addressed Casey, feeling the old .45 on his back.

Casey drew his pistol and leveled it behind Carter. "Doc..." Carter turned and saw Dr. Rich standing up behind him his head down at the floor.

Carter drew the .45 out and leveled it at the doctor as well. "Doctor what're you doing?" Carter asked already thinking he knew the answer.

"Uhhh...." Rich reached out to them with the rotting, outstretched arm. The doctor, oblivious to everything around him, staggered toward the two officers.

"I'm sorry Allen." Carter pulled the trigger and the pistol fired, sending a round right through the doctor's right eye. The head snapped back and hit the floor with a dull thud. Brownish blood flowed out of the obliterated eye and made a puddle onto the hard wood floor.

"Jesus, Mirado!" Casey shouted as he threw up. "What the hell do we do now?"

Carter, .45 still in his hand, looked down at the dead doctor. "We head to the police station. We need to let the others know what's happening. If he was right, the whole city could be infected." Carter started to the door with Casey following right behind him. Carter put the .45 in his lap as he started the car. Casey climbed in and buckled up before Carter turned the sirens on and hoping that they weren't too late.