Biohazard

14

We’d just come back from scouting out some vehicles to get us out of the city and Specs had been acting funny all day. He wasn’t saying much. After we’d settled in, he came over to me.

“I got something, Nash,” he said. “I got something real bad.”

“You’re just tired,” I told him.

“I been coughing for three days.”

And he had been. I think we were all aware that something was going on, but maybe we justified it in our own minds by saying it was just a cold or something…even though we all damn well knew that even cold bugs were serious business these days.

“I can’t even breathe out of my nose, Nash,” he told me. “My muscles and joints ache all the time. Sometimes I have trouble breathing.”

“Don’t say anything to the others, not yet.”

He shook his head. “Afraid I can’t do that, Nash. I can’t take the chance of infecting them with what I have.”

Good old Specs. Guy went through life pretty much afraid of everything. One of those people that God or Nature or what have you had given barely enough strength and fortitude to get through day by day. But when the chips were down, he was as strong as they came. As selfless as you could imagine.

We told Janie and Sean and they would have been totally justified to want to get away from him, but they didn’t. He was one of us and we were going to make it together.

“Don’t you worry, little brother,” Sean told him. “We’ll get you on your feet. Before you know it, me and you’ll be hunting Trogs again.”

Specs tried to smile at that and a tear slid from his eye.

The next few days were bad. Specs’ skin began to take on a bluish, cyanotic tinge that concerned us all. He couldn’t breathe. He was gasping all the time. He was hot to the touch and a sour-smelling sweat rolled down his face. He’d have choking fits that would go on for ten minutes. In a last ditch attempt, Sean went and found us some military-grade antibiotics and we shot Specs full of them. It did no good. It was simply too late.

Mostly he was incoherent, thrashing in his sleep and even convulsing. There was little we could do. Janie mothered him the best she could. Now and again, he’d wake up, look at me, and start talking about throwing corpses in the back of the garbage truck in Youngstown or sleeping in cars or any of the other stupid things we’d done.

It was then I realized he was going to die. The idea of that cut me open, made me bleed. We’d been through a lot. Specs was like some stupid little brother that annoys you, hangs around, but won’t go away and you’re secretly glad for it. I didn’t want to be without him.

Then one day, he said to me, “Nash…don’t let me die like this…it hurts…everything fucking hurts…I can’t even breathe. Put me out of my fucking misery.”

I just shook my head; it was unthinkable.

But Specs was insistent. “Please, Nash, don’t make me suffer. Give me…give me to The Shape.”

It was insane and I told him so, but he kept pushing and he made Sean and Janie hear him out, too. See, Specs was of the mind that The Shape was pissed off at him because it had been his idea to do the burnt offering of that old man. That’s not what The Shape had wanted at all, Specs said. So it had let him get infected with some germ as a punishment. Maybe it was true, maybe it was bullshit. Who knew?

“See, that’s why this is perfect,” he told us. “I’ll be a sacrifice. I’ll give myself to that monster and it’ll save me from dying slow and it’ll keep The Shape happy. He’ll take care of you guys, keep you safe.”

I was absolutely against it. True, The Shape did want something more. I knew that. I felt that. I’d heard it in my mind. My big mistake was telling Specs that. But it was too late.

“Please, Nash. Please,” he kept saying.

We were all against it…but that pathetic, pleading look in his eyes wore us down. Sean broke first and said it was the only goddamn decent thing we could do for him. And then Janie…

“He’s our friend,” she told me. “I’m against wasting life of any sort…but we can’t make him suffer. If this is what he wants…I guess you should allow him it.”

There was argument, but he got his way.

We were going to sacrifice Specs.

We were going to give him to The Shape.