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Homer Gibbon.
When Goat didn’t answer, Homer kicked him again. Same spot, only harder.
Gibbon wore no shoes but he knew how to kick. And from the laugh that bubbled out of him, he enjoyed it. The way some kids like kicking cats. A small cruelty that spoke with disturbing eloquence about this man. Even if Goat had not known what kind of monster Homer was, even if Goat had not sat through weeks of testimony by clinical psychologists and forensics experts at this man’s trial, he would have deduced important truths about him from that kick and its accompanying laugh.
“I asked you a question, boy,” said Homer, his voice colored by an accent that sounded southern but was pure rural Pennsylvania. “Want to see what happens if I have to ask you again.”
“Y-yes…” stammered Goat.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I was there.”
Homer kicked him again. Even harder. Goat screamed in pain and tried to turn away to protect the spot on his leg that now burned as if scalded.
“You was there when what?” demanded Homer.
“Yes,” said Goat in a small, fractured voice, “I was there when they killed you. At the prison. At the execution. I was there.”
Homer nodded in satisfaction. “What’s that make you? Some kind of news reporter?”
Behind Homer one of the wounded people was crawling toward the door. Her shirt was torn, revealing a bra with little blue flowers on it. Most of her right shoulder looked like raw hamburger. Goat hadn’t witnessed the attack specifically on her, but he recognized the bite. Even from ten feet away Goat could see a thick black goo mixed in with the blood, and in that goo tiny threadlike worms wriggled. Dark lines ran crookedly from the torn flesh, delineating the pattern of her veins and blood vessels. Even though the bite had just happened a few minutes ago, the infection was spreading at incredible speed.
So fast, thought Goat, it’s happening so fast.
It was nothing Mother Nature could ever have created. Nothing natural could spread infection at that rate. Lucifer 113 had been genetically engineered to be a perfect rapid-onset bioweapon, and the modified parasites took hold inside the bloodstream with all the deadly speed of a neurotoxin.
Homer turned, following Goat’s line of sight, and again there was the low, wet laughter.
“Fuck yeah,” he said. “That’s right. That bitch is one of mine now.”
“One of yours?” asked Goat weakly.
Homer turned back and then squatted down in front of Goat, arms dangling off the tops of his knees like a gorilla. “You gonna lay there and tell me you don’t know what’s happening? You’re a reporter and you want to tell me you don’t know what I done in Stebbins? You going to fuck with me like that?”
“N-no…”
Homer reached out and patted Goat on the cheek. Three pats, each one harder so that the last one was a full slap that rocked the reporter back against the table. It was not as hard as the kicks had been, but hard enough, and Goat’s head banged off the wooden table. He twisted sideways, once more curling into a fetal ball, collapsing against the side of the badly injured customer who’d been sitting there weeping and bleeding.
It was then that Goat realized two very bad things.
The first was that the man was no longer weeping. Or breathing for that matter.
And second was that his eyes were open.
Wide open.
Staring right at Goat.
Black mucus ran from between the man’s slack lips. There was nothing in his eyes. No pain, no confusion over the way in which everything had suddenly gone wrong for him, no spark of anything. The eyes saw Goat, though; that
much was certain.
The dead man opened his mouth to show his teeth.
Behind Goat Homer Gibbon chuckled.
“Look who woke up hungry,” he said.
