Weavers Book I: The Cutters

Tip #14: Don't Go Looking For Problems

It's empty. Nothing but broken boards and dust. It looks like the roof caved in a long time ago, maybe even before the apocalypse hit. Trashy seems undeterred, muttering to himself as he tromps inside. Nothing.
"Nothing," Trashy says, echoing my sentiment. "Nilch, nada, zip, diddly-squat. Jack-shit. Nothing. None at all. Where'd you go, Daddy-o?"
"Maybe we should leave," Ryan says, staring at a giant abandoned spiderweb. "No one's here." Trashy doesn't listen, only moves deeper into the dark recesses of the house. Against my better interest, I follow him into the gloom.
And gasp.
This room is most certainly not collapsed. It's as if once you get past the wreckage, you enter a safe haven. A smart idea, but also fucking terrifying.
Not that it's much of a haven. On one side of the room is a moldy couch, and on the other side is a broken TV. The rest of the room is empty. No one. Yet another nada.
Until I realize the couch is moving. Rising and falling gently like waves in the ocean, but I know better. The ocean can be deadly. Silently, I point at the rippling couch. Ryan opens his mouth to speak, but Trashy silences him with a hand over his mouth. The three of us stand stock still, waiting like deer frozen in headlights for the great mound to awaken.
After a tense 30 seconds (it felt like hours) Trashy shrugs and steps forward.
"Hey there, skedaddler. You're in my house, mouse. Zat your couch, or are you just a crouch?" A muffled sound comes from beneath the couch, which isn't a couch at all, but a mound of blankets. How can someone sleep under that much cover when it's 90 plus degrees outside? "Can't hear you," Trashy says. "Speak ups, Rupps." Part of the blankets stick up, as if the person under them is trying to ward us away. Then the blankets fall to the side, revealing a man with egg-white colored skin and greasy black hair.
"The fuck you want from me, cum-bags?" he slurs, still with his eyes closed. "I live here. I chased away them other kids, if that's who you're looking for."
"Well I'll be shoved into a drainpipe," Trashy says. "Hi, Dad." The slurred voice clears a little bit.
"Welcome back, Wise-Ass. Told ya you cuddent leave. Ya can't survive out there by yourself. You need your daddy, hee, hee, hee..."
"I've been gone for over a year, Pops. And I only came back to ask some questions."
"I'm a..." Trashy's "Dad" sits up with a loud, heaving grunt. "I'm a teacher. Questions are easy."
"Yeah? Well, they about me parents. The old guardian squad. And not you, remember. You told me I was adopted."
The man's face darkens, etched with age-old wrinkles and a thick grimace. "You got no business askin', Wise-Ass." He cracks his knuckles menacingly and Trashy winces like he's been stabbed.
That's my cue, I guess. I step forward, in front of Trashy and Ryan, so that I'm right in the center of this sick shitbag's vision.
"You touch him," I say, pulling out my machete. "And I'll slice your balls off, old man."
"Ah-he-he-he," the man rasps. "You found a girlfriend, Wise-Ass. Didn't know you had it in ya. You run 'er over yet? Eh-eh-eh-eh." His laugh was the sound that steel makes when you try to grind it with a cheese grater. Harsh, evil. Disgusting.
"I'm his sister, you stupid pus-bag. His twin sister. And I think that my brother asked you a question. You'd better start answering." The man emits his disgusting laugh again, but I can see his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. I scared him.
Good. In the pause that ensues, I give him a once over. He's not quite fat, but he's tall and certainly a wide load. He looks like he hasn't showered in years. His clothes are baggy and loaded with a few gallons of sweat. His eyes are rheumy and rimmed with a yellow crust. The irises look like they used to be blue but then got polluted, leaving him with some watery grey color. And his skin is sickeningly pale, covered in some places with long, unkempt hairs. He stands the rest of the way up and I wish he hadn't.
His lower body is completely naked leaving his... his thing exposed it looks like it hasn't seen action since World War I. The skin around it is baggy and the color of wet lint. His legs are like twin sticks, so thin I wonder how they can support his thick body. Some miracles of nature are just too gross to explore the answers to.
"Are you threatening me, little whore?" he asks, trying to sound tough. He fails, his voice squeaks like someone's stepping on his vocal cords.
"No," I drawl, loading my voice with as much sarcasm as is humanly possible. "I'm giving you a goddamn compliment." He senses the raw anger behind my voice. I am drained of energy, I'm tired, and if he fucks with me I'll turn him into gourmet steak.
"Okay, okay. You want to know about your dirty family history? Here goes.
"I was great once. I was a scientist at Lioness Labs—"
"That's where my parents worked!" I exclaim before I can stop myself. Trashy's dad gives me a dirty look.
"No shit, Sherlock. Let me finish."
"Okay. My bad."
"I was a scientist at Lioness Labs. Dr. Weinstein, Kaleb Weinstein. Worked in the biochemical research center.
Me and your parents, we'd been checking out this weird bacteria in your bloodstream. We'd been getting reports of some weird bacteria that just floated around in the blood. Doing nothing. Not multiplying, not anything. It was in a few random people. No idea how it got there. The Weaver virus, but it didn't have a name yet."
"Was this before the meteor?"
"Shut up, female Wise-Ass. I'm telling a story."
"Sorry."
"This was before the meteor. Back before I'd ever touched a bottle, believe that shizz?" His voice is getting more slurred by the second. I'm worried he might pass out before he finishes. "Before I was some crumby-ass teacher as well. I was a scientist. The highfalutin. Yeah. And I was a big deal. I really was." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
"Then your parents got married, and a few months later, they were pregnant with you. Erm... both of you. When they found out they were having twins, they were thrilled.
The next news didn't thrill them nearly as much. They found out that one of the kids had some kind of cranial deformity. They had no clue what it was; it was just there. We had no clue what it did, or even if it would matter. It was just there. Like the virus, but we hadn't made that connection yet. Never did, officially, but it's obvious now."
"You mean..."
"Wise-Ass over here has the virus in 'im. Always has. Was born with it."
"Always knew I was bonked-y," Trashy says with a weak, meaningless smile.
"As the pregnancy progressed, it became clear that the... parasite in his head was growing. Stealing the nutrients. Only a tiny bit, not enough to fully affect the fetus, but enough.
Your parents wanted me there at the hospital when y'all were born. Don't know why. I guess I was they right hand man or somethin'. I saw it all. And I'm telling you now: Wise-Ass was born dead.
"Bullshit," Ryan says. "If he was born dead, what is he now? A ghost?"
"Shuddup and listen, squirt. He ain't no ghost. He's real as you and me."
To me, that doesn't discount the possibility that he's a ghost. Ghosts are real, maybe even more real than we are. Ghosts haunt our every move, and every move we will make. But Weinstein's talking again, so I'll listen.
"He was born dead, he was. No pulse, none of that shit. No blood, no cries. Your parents were distraught, but they still has their second kid."
"Ha!" Trashy exclaims. "Told you I was older!" I flip him off. Dr. Weinstein fixes him with a glare that could kill unicorns.
"Shuddup, Wise-Ass, you shuddent even exist, you shudda died in the womb like you was supposed to."
"Shove off him," I warn, twirling my machete. "He's worth more than your entire life, you useless scumbag."
"You'd-a better lay off too, prissy bitch, or I'll sew yer damned mouth shut." He says the words with no real force. Cowardly jackass.
"Try me."
"Just continue," Ryan pleads. Weinstein does, but not after giving me a long, hate-filled glare.
I return the favor as he talks.
"So after Wise-Ass was born dead, they filled out a death certificate, and took 'im out. Not sure where they put 'im. They asked a shit tonna questions, and then yo' daddy asked me to leave. I did, I started wandering the hospital. Soon I got bored of them white walls and shizz, and decided to take a walk outside. I was walkin' outside and I see a little baby, crawling around like a 2 year old. I'll be damned if it was older than a day. And whaddya know, it was Wise-Ass himself, his corpse had gotten up and crawled out, sure as day. Fucking crazy shit. Weinstein waves his arms around wildly. "He was three fuckin' minutes old, and crawlin' raround like that. Damn straight. Wise-Ass the fuckin' sneaky weasel. No clue how he does that shit. It's the worms, sure as hell. Movere Relatorium makes him some kinda super shit."
"But he's not... crazy," Ryan says.
"Speak for yourself," I mutter.
"Well, he's not crazy like the other wormheads. He's like... normal crazy," Ryan says.
"True, I mean, he hasn't killed us yet," I say with a shrug. "Who knows?"
"So," I say, still processing Weinstein's narrative. "He had a death certificate... did they use his name?"
"I assume so," Weinstein says. "But to me, he's Wise-Ass. The Zombie Kid."
"So... what happened then? How'd you go from scientist to... this?"
"Eh-eh-eh, I'm a sad fuck, ain't I? Yeh, I am. I know it, too. I stole they baby. I stole your brother." He points at me, an unnerving look in his eyes. "How's that for guilt?"
"Why did you abuse him then? Doesn't that make you more guilty?"
"Eh-eh-eh-eh. I never abused the useless sod. No siree. He got what was comin' to him, eh-eh-eh. He's a mudderfuggin' freak o' nature. He's one of them. A Weeve. A—"
"Fuck off, piss-pants. You're worse than he ever will be." Trashy looks waxy and scared.
"He's right," he says quietly. "Believe me I knows it, Mr. Tiddles. My daddy's never wrong."
"Looks like I taught you something. Good to know I wasn't a total waste."
"Shut the fuck up!" I yell, jumping to my feet and holding my machete to his throat. "I don't care what you know about all this, all I care about is that you tell us. What did you do to him?"
"Eh-eh-eh, you won't kill me, princess." I dig the blade further into the folds of his neck. A shining drop of blood falls onto his greasy white t-shirt.
"Bet."
"Okay, okay. You don't understand. He shouldn't even be alive." I don't move the blade away from him. "He had an unknown illness. I was just trying to find out more about it. Like autism."
"Keep talking."
"The thing is, after Wise-Ass was born, the virus in the bloodstream that we were checking out mass-multiplied. It still wasn't doing anything, but it was spreading. Like wildfire. Faster than wildfire. And at the time, we attributed it to the meteor. Radioactive space dust. But now I don't think so. I think it was you. Both of you. You triggered this whole shitting mess."
"Yeah, like you did anything to stop it. All you did is shove a few test tubes up Trashy's ass and pray that it works. For all we know, your 'experiments' caused the virus to mutate in retaliation."
"You know what?" Dr. Weinstien says, stretching himself to his full height. "I don't wanna deal with you fucking shitholes. Fuckin' kids these fuckin' days, always fuckin' doing... fucking... what's the fucking..."
"Shit," Ryan says. "Shit." He points at Weinstien's hands. The smallest sliver of white thread is protruding from his middle finger.
"How fitting," I say. "The scientist is no match for the disease."
And then I run the machete through his throat.