Page 42 of So Thirsty

“You shouldn’t touch him.” Henry’s tone has gone harsh. “You’re too close.”

The man stirs. The movement is subtle at first, but then his head lifts, neck reels back, and with his good arm he grabs Naomi by the hair. His frailty must be only in appearance, because Naomi fails to get away. He has her.

It happens so fast.

He bashes her head to the floor. Once. Twice.

Then he flips her over onto her back and he climbs on top of her, pinning her down with his revolting living-corpse body. He lets out another pained howl before he flops forward and sinks his teeth into her neck.

He bites her. He’s biting her. He’s fucking biting her.

I forgot I was holding the poker until it nearly slips through my hand as I lose control of myself, as I scream like I’ve never screamed, like no one has ever screamed. I see blood on the man’s face, around his rotten mouth. Blood splattering onto his pale, pale skin. Naomi’s blood.

My horror turns to fury and my grip tightens on the poker and I lift it over my head, and I dive forward, and I swing it as hard as I can, which turns out to be pretty hard, because when it lands it cracks the man’s skull, and the hook gets stuck in it.

And yet he continues to attack Naomi, slurping at her neck.

“Get off her!” I scream, yanking the poker. I put my foot on the man’s shoulder for leverage and manage to free the poker from his skull, and I bring it down again, this time on his back. His skin rips open, exposing his bones. I hit him a third time, on the neck, and the hook gets stuck again. I lean down and pull it across, opening a deep gash.

Now I’ve got his attention.

He pushes himself up on his functioning arm, the other dangling awkwardly at his side. He turns to face me, hissing like a cat. And before I know what I’m doing, I shove the poker into his eye. It makes a wet, squishing sound.

He doesn’t react. He doesn’t even bleed.

I pull the poker out and try again.

“Die!” I hear myself say. “Why won’t you die?”

He lunges toward me, wrapping his bone fingers around my ankle. The move is so unexpected, and I’m so shocked by it, that I don’t have time to ward it off, to kick him away. His hold is so tight it hurts.

It hurts even before he pulls me down and I drop the poker. Even before he brings my leg to his mouth, my calf to his decayed teeth, and clamps on.

He doesn’t have all his teeth, but there are enough. It’s torment. The destruction of my leg is quick and vicious.

It’s so horrifying. I’m looking down, watching it happen, what’s being done to me, and I feel completely helpless.

And then I look over at Naomi, and she’s holding her neck, trying to stop the bleeding, and her eyes glaze over, and I feel completely hopeless.

And the others, only a few feet away from us, just stand there. Doing nothing. Nothing but watching.

“Help!” I say, though I know no one’s coming to our rescue. “Help us!”

My vision goes spotty, and I might lose consciousness, and all of a sudden Henry is standing over me. Stepping over me. He digs his fingers into the gash in the pale man’s neck and starts to pull. It looks like it requires some effort, but not as much as it should to separate a man’s head from his body. Like untwisting the lid of a stubborn jar.

It takes seconds. It makes a disgusting noise, a sort of vile ripping.

The man’s head spirals toward me, landing right in front of my face. There’s still some of me between his teeth. Flesh and blood and chunky red something…I don’t even know. He’s so much more human up close; I can see the man he was before he became whatever this is. His eyelids remain open, and I have this terrible feeling that he’s looking back at me with the one eye still intact. This terrible feeling that he’s still not dead.

The skin of his neck hangs loose and he leaks this treacly substance that I don’t think is blood. It’s too dark and putrid, and it drip, drip, drip, drips. Whatever it is, there isn’t a lot of it.

Henry nudges the head with his foot and it whirls away. He kneels in front of me, pushing my hair out of my face with a cold hand.

“I hope you can forgive me,” he says.

I look down at my leg, at the wound that’s even worse than anticipated.

I look over at Naomi, and her eyes have rolled back.