Weavers Book I: The Cutters

Tip #3: Don't Let Anyone In

"Please," begs a short Asian kid with matted black hair and sunken black eyes. "Help me."
    "Who the hell are you?" I demand, backing away from the puddle of blood he's leaving on the floor.
    "Ryan, I'm Ryan. Please, help. They shot me. Those damn assholes shot me."
    "Woa, woah, woah. Slow down. Who shot you? Why? Are you diseased?"
    "No, no I'm not diseased. My name is Ryan. The Worms. They shot me."
    "Who? Who shot you, buster? That's the important question."
    "I- I don't know, please let me in. The group of kids. They killed my mom and dad, and my little sister."
    "Let me guess," I say, massaging my temples. "Led by a tall, pale kid? Scars all over?"
    "Y-yeah. He was with a group of five. They didn't look diseased. They smiled. He said they were here to help."
    "Help, my ass. How old are you, kid?"
    "Eleven." Eleven. Only three years younger than me, but it seemed like we were centuries apart.
    "So, Ryan. Why were you and your family here?" As I asked it, I saw a flicker in his eyes. Whatever he's about to say is going to be a lie.
    "We were looking for my grandma. It was at her house." He sank to the floor. "Please, help me."
    I almost said no. The word bubbled on my lips, two simple letters. I opened my mouth to speak, and:
    "Okay."
    Well shit, now I've done it.
****
    This kid is going to ruin me. All that I've worked for.
    On the plus side, together we managed to get to Cabela's for gear. I got a nice backpack, sturdy enough to last, big enough to hold my typewriter. Ryan was particularly nosy about that. He wanted to know what I had it for. I wouldn't tell him.  Most importantly, I got a military grade flashlight. If I planned to go into the tunnels, I would need it. Natural light isn't exactly abundant down there. I also got a nice winter coat. It seems unnecessary now. It's August and it's sweltering. Ryan didn't hesitate to point that out to me, despite the fact that he is wearing a long sleeve shirt. Hypocrite. But in a few months, fights will break out over coats and jackets and gloves. There isn't enough to go around. Best to get it now so we can avoid that bullshit later.
    After that explanation, Ryan grabbed one too. Mine is a slate grey camo. Ryan's is orange and reminds me too much of Ollie's demolition jacket.
    I think the coolest thing I got, however, was a pair of 400 dollar combat boots. The best part of the apocalypse is that everything is free. I can have shit I could never have afforded before, even with my rich parents. Freedom. Anarchy. It has its perks.
    "So how long've you been hanging here?" Ryan asks. He sounds innocent enough, but I won't tell him.
    "Long enough," I say, swinging the heavy bag over my shoulder. "But not for much longer."
    "Where are you gonna go?"
    "Subways," I say. Ryan opens his mouth to protest. "Yeah, I know. The Weavers like the dark. But there are many more supplies. Plus, you've got a direct route to anywhere you want."
    "I guess," Ryan says in a voice that tells me he's not at all convinced. He's limping, but if he doesn't reopen the wound, the leg should heal just fine. The bullet was already out. God knows why, or how. At the time I figured such things weren't important. All that matters is that it's out. I ain't no surgeon, but everyone knows that the bullet has to be out or else you're fucked. And I am in no way equipped to pull out any bullets.
    The Cutters having guns worries me though. Those bastards are enough of a headache without long range weapons. While we walk away from the McDonald's, Ryan fills me in on the new and improved Cutters.
    "The strings under the fingernails, you know, the first physical symptom? Theirs were short. And thin. They looked more like thread than rope, you get what I'm saying?" I don't reply. Of course I get what he's saying. He continues on, undeterred. "But man, you shoulda seen their guns. Those things were the size of cannons. And the thready shit was all over them, like. It looked like they were made of thread."
    The idea wasn't entirely implausible. In the beginning, when groups were all the rage and we thought things might blow over, I was in some rich snooty house. About thirteen kids were there. Molly, Layla, Opal, Wendy, Leona, Hunter, Fitz, Andrew, Eidin, Kaleb, Marcus, Hashik, and Yusef. Molly and Layla, those two were best friends. They were besties and they were filthy rich. If it weren't for the apocalypse, they'd probably get into Harvard or some spiffy Ivy League college. One of them owned the house, but I can't remember which one. They were the besties who decide to twin and look freakishly identical despite not being related. Opal, she was a big black girl, but surprisingly passive and shy for her size. Wendy, she was a big, loud, white girl who acted like the opposite of Opal. She was one bossy sucker, always yellin' and going on about who does what and who goes where. Leona and Hunter were twin siblings, aside from their gender they looked pretty much the same. They both had light brown hair and hazel eyes. Fitz was some kind of hippie, he had waist-length blonde dreadlocks and a body covered in tattoos. As far as I know, he only wore tie-dye. He was a vegetarian, too. Andrew, he was a tiny kid. Some kinda contortionist, too. He could fit anywhere. Eidin was a trans female who was ultra sensitive. You said the wrong thing and she'd go off on you like a wife who catches her husband cheating. Kaleb, he was short and chubby with horrible acne (but the apocalypse diet did wonders for his complexion. Creme de la Starvation) and he had a deep voice that made him sound twenty years older than he really was. Marcus was somebody's younger brother, five or six and he cried all the time. Understandable. If I was six, I'd be crying too, given the situation. The poor kid. Hashik was this badass Muslim dude who walked around with a heavy board studded with nails. He communicated solely in grunts. That guy was a brute. I say that with respect. Yusef was this wiry, hyper kid who was Andrew's best friend. He kept trying to get people to call him Seth, but no one ever did. That kid was hyper enough to kill a lazy cow. A very big, lazy cow. He had enough energy for all of us. On days where we were too depressed to get out of bed, he'd come in and drag us out. He was surprisingly strong for such a skinny thing. He never carried any weapons. That kid fought with his bare hands. The first time I saw him fight was against a flabby woman Weaver with dagger-like fake nails. He was like a whirlwind. I'm pretty sure my jaw went through the floor and down to the pits of Tartarus. He was some kid.
    I can't remember who got it first, but I think it was Yusef. He went rabid in the middle of the night one day, killed Leona and Hunter, as well as Molly and Layla. Eiden whacked him in the back of the skull with a mental Louisville Sluggers bat. Then Andrew woke up and blamed the whole thing on Eiden, who in retaliation strangled him to death. Then Wendy woke up and walked in on the massacre, and she went ballistic. I think that I might've gone partially deaf for a while, the way she was screaming. This, unsurprisingly, woke up Kaleb, Marcus, Hashik, and Opal. Not Fitz. That guy could sleep through World War III, which, given the chaos surrounding me, could actually be unfolding in front of me.
    "What the Hell, Eiden!"
    "I didn't do anything!" she yelled, which was, of course, a lie. Maybe she hadn't caused the original stuff, but she did kill Andrew. Hashik just stared and grunted, bleary eyed and half-awake.
    "You guys blame everything on me!" Eiden screams. "It's because I'm fucking trans, isn't t?"
    "Eiden," Opal says. She was a friend of Eiden's. "No one is saying that, girl. Calm down."
    "It's them!" she screeches, practically foaming at the mouth. "Everyone always thinks I've done something, everything's all my fault, yeah? All poor fucking Eidin's fault. Yeah!" She clamped her fists into her hair and tugged out a few long strands. "Fuck you all! Yeah! Fuck you all!"
    "Eidyn—"
    "Fuck you too, Opal. Everyone! You all hate me. Bastards. Bastards!" As she ranted, that's when I saw it.
    She had threads coming from her fingers.
    "She's got the disease," I say, the first comment I've contributed to this disaster. "Look at her nails."
    "See?" Eiden screams. "You're all a bunch of transphobic assholes. Assholes! I am just as valid as—"
    She's cut off by an RPG blast to the stomach. Her guts explode into a firework of gore, blood caking all of us. I stare at Opal. She's holding a giant gun the size of her enormous thighs. Eiden's body crashes to the floor, smoking and gurgling with boiling blood. Her pale green shirt is almost black with mucus, blood and liquid shit from inside of her stomach. The carpet around her body was a similar color. For a moment she looked as if she was still alive, her head twisting back and forth like a dog shaking off water. Then Opal, sobbing hysterically, blows her head wide open with a second RPG shot, covering us in another sheet of blood. Eidyn never moves again. Blood flows from the wound like an avalanche, burying the surroundings in brain matter and fragments of skull.
    Marcus attempts to sprint out of the room but only makes it a few steps, where his white Nike's end up ankle deep in Eiden's intestines. His fruitless struggles crush her ribcage into fragments of shining bones.
    He tries to scream but rather than sound, an endless stream of vomit spews through his mouth, the color of pizza grease, and it masses onto the ground, mixing with blood to make a sickening concoction. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is diarrhea mixed with period blood. Marcus collapses to his knees with the force of his heaves, soaking his jeans in the muck. The up-close and personal smell sends him into uncontrollable dry heaves, but I'm no longer watching him. I'm watching Eiden. Or rather, Eiden's fingernails. The ropy, tell-tale strings of disease are still growing. No, not growing. Emerging. The threads are escaping to find a new host. The Weeves are on the move.
    "Guys," I say. "Look." No one pays me any attention. They are all transfixed by Marcus's pathetic vomiting. He's so out of it that he's rolling on the floor, hysterically sobbing and choking on his stomach lining. I watch in horror as he rolls right over into the squirming mass of worms. He stiffens as if he knows what he's just done. He stands up effortlessly, still coated in human waste, and I see a glassy look in his eyes. Up until this point I never realized how fast Movere Relatorium spreads. It gets inside you within milliseconds. Less.
    I don't think I have or will ever feel that much raw terror again. Watching this little kid become a walking zombie. Watching him walk calmly over to Kaleb and breaks his neck as if he's some kind of trained super-soldier. Opal embeds a third grenade in his face. Instantly his eyes, lips, nose, everything that could identify him, vanishes, leaving a rough, bloody mess behind. He sank to the ground like a grieving mother, his brain reduced to a pile of ground meat. Then him and Eiden laid spread eagled next to eachother, like twin suicide bombers.
    "Fuck," Opal says. "Three fucking grenades. That's a third of our supply." It's true. RPGs, while very good for apocalyptic massacres, also have increasingly rare ammunition.
    "Look," I say again, and this time I get attention. My finger stretches to point at a mess of worms writhing out of Marcus's brain. All of them flock straight to Opal, right past the silent Hashik.
    He wasn't just silent. He was dead. Some kind of shrapnel had sliced through his head. You could see the entrance wound, and you could see it poking out of the back of his shaved head. But still he was standing. As if he could not die. As if cued on by my gaze, he closes his eyes and collapses. Despite the violent death, I could see peace on his face as the life trickles from his limbs.
    "Fuck," Opal says again. I don't think there's any better word during the apocalypse. Can I have a gun? Fuck. Where's my friend? Fuck. Can I have some food? Fuck. Everything is fuck.
    Especially when you've just watched all or most of your friends get blown to bits like they're in Vietnam or some shit.
    "Squish it," I say, watching with intense anxiety as the virus squiggles its way towards her Vans.
    Bad idea. She brings her foot down on the beast with a sickening squelch, but all it does is give it a free ride into her bloodstream. Straight through the thin soles of her sneakers.
    How does that thing move so fast? I think as Opal's eyes gloss over. Shit. I've got to get her away from that gun. She could kill both of us. No. There's no more us. We are separate. There's me and there's her.
    It, not her. It's no longer human, although it does look like it is. That thing is not Opal anymore, it's an alien disease using her hapless body as a host.
    I'm completely unarmed and I'm faced by a giant psychotic woman with a grenade launcher.
    And here I was thinking things couldn't get worse. Well, fuck that idea. My brain scrambles for an exit. Dad did warn me, he said anyone could get it. I should have listened, damn it. I should have listened to him.
    Too late now. Opal has me cornered and she has a gun, and I have nothing. This is how I will die.
    I hear a bang and I close my eyes, waiting for the ripping pain. I hope I pass out before the pain gets too bad, and...
    I'm not dead. Opal is on the ground, a tiny bullet hole in the back of her neck. I dance away from the worms and stare at my unlikely savior.
    "Hey," he says. "I'm Ollie."