Shit. Andrew drew back, pressing into the wall again. It was the soldier he’d seen looking through the window in the door. It had to be. Who else could it be? he thought. I don’t think anyone was here when I first got inside. I didn’t see anyone. And who’d be sitting in the infirmary in the dark, all alone?
If it was the same soldier who’d peered in through the window, then he didn’t know Andrew was there. Not with any certainty.
Which means I can get the jump on him. Andrew adjusted his grip on the IV pole, readying himself. One end of it tapered down to a threaded, three-inch long prong where it had screwed into the base and the other forked in a T, twin hooks where bags of intravenous fluid or medicine could be attached. Andrew raised this end back in his hands, ready to swing around like a Louisville Slugger and drive it squarely into the soldier’s head. He took a deep breath, let it loose, then leapt from around the doorway.
Only it wasn’t a soldier on the other side, at least not the sort Andrew had been expecting. What stood before him in the infirmary didn’t even register as human at first in Andrew’s brain, and he shrank back, his arms drooping to his sides, holding the IV stand with limp-wristed impotence.
It was shaped like a man, upright and bipedal. From there, most other resemblance ended. Grotesquely deformed, its flesh seemed to have erupted, enormous overlapping tumors stacked thickly one atop the other, protruding from nearly every visible inch. So violently had these growths occurred, they had actually ripped through the skin in places, peeling it back in broad swaths, leaving behind panels of red, raw, exposed meat and tendons. Its facial features had nearly been obliterated by the disfiguring growths, and its bald scalp had split open and retracted, the skull bulging out on one side like something beneath had swelled to near bursting. What remained of its skin was slick with pus and blood, both of which oozed, greasy and glistening, from the lumps and cysts covering its form.
It was a mottled pair of fatigue pants and combat boots it wore that finally gave it away.
“Jesus Christ,” Andrew gasped, shocked, horrified. “O’Malley?”
When the deformed man in front of him moved his head, following the sound of Andrew’s voice, there was a moist, sickening, slippery sound, muscles and ligaments moving. Again he heard sniffing, canine-like and loud.
“Corporal O’Malley?” Andrew asked, his voice little more than a stunned, disbelieving croak. “Is that you?”
O’Malley stepped toward him, his heavy boots falling loudly against the floor, his right leg dragging behind him, as if injured or maimed.
“It’s Andrew Braddock,” Andrew said, obligingly stepping back, hoisting the IV stand again, leveling it protectively in front of him. “Remember? Just-Andrew.”
The rational part of his mind, usually so calm and collected, was nowhere to be found. In its place was something shrill and panic-stricken. What’s wrong with him? Jesus Christ, what happened to his skin?
“You’re sick,” he said, inching sideways, trying to ease his way behind a nearby cart and use it as a crude barrier between himself and O’Malley. “You…oh, God, you’re in bad shape, man. Let me go get Dr. Montgomery. She can help.”
O’Malley’s head whipped on his neck again, his entire body pivoting, squaring off in his direction. Baring his teeth in a vicious grin, he hissed like a cat, sending a spray of spittle flying from the loose skin of his lips.
He can’t see, Andrew realized. In Dani’s room earlier that night, he’d noticed how the nodules on O’Malley’s face had swelled around his eyes, nearly sealing them shut. It’s happened all the way, then, when those growths on his head spread. He’s tracking me, but not by sight—with his sense of smell, his ears.
If O’Malley couldn’t see, Andrew knew he might stand a chance of reaching the door, getting out of there without his notice. But when he took a step in that direction, O’Malley hissed again, aware enough of his footsteps to be alerted by the sound.
“Listen to me,” Andrew said. “Dani’s worried about you. She’s right down the hallway. Let me get her. Let me get Dr. Montgomery.”
He had no intention, of course, of bringing Dani anywhere near the grotesque thing now shambling in his direction. The shock alone at seeing what had happened to her friend would probably have killed her. But he had to say something, anything to try and reason with him.
It’s still O’Malley, Dani’s friend. He’s a good guy and he’s still in there somewhere, no matter what’s happening to his body. He has to be.
Because the alternative was too horrifying to even consider.
“You’re sick, Thomas. I just want to help you.” Without abandoning the IV stand, his only semblance of a weapon, Andrew shut up and stepped again toward the door, this time quietly enough to not attract O’Malley’s notice.
As he moved, O’Malley hunkered down to the ground, panning his head this way and that in a sweeping arc, uttering those loud snuffling sounds again. Morbidly curious, disgusted but fascinated, Andrew paused, watching. O’Malley’s movements were primitive, nearly bestial. Using his arms for forelegs, O’Malley scuttled forward, quick and spider-like, tracking Andrew to the cart, then pausing there, sniffing curiously.
He turned his face toward Andrew, and for a moment, Andrew could have sworn that he could see him somehow, that he knew who Andrew was.
“O’Malley?” he whispered. “Are you in there?”
O’Malley sprang at him, moving so fast, Andrew had no time to recoil or fight back. He barely even had time to cry out before O’Malley slammed into him, plowing him off his feet and sending him sprawling to the floor. His voice cut short in a breathless whoof! as the wind got knocked from his lungs and he smacked the back of his head against the tiles hard enough to leave him seeing spots of light twinkling in front of his eyes.
In a flash, O’Malley lunged at him, snapping his teeth directly at Andrew’s face. When he’d landed, Andrew had managed to wedge the IV pole between them laterally, and wrenched it up now in front of his face so the bite—meant for his head—sank instead around the metal shaft. O’Malley reared back, straddling Andrew, and shook his head like a Rottweiler shaking off a dousing of water, trying to wrestle the pole away.
Andrew swung the right side of the IV stand around, ripping it loose from O’Malley’s mouth and slamming the T-junction into his head. O’Malley fell sideways and Andrew scrambled backwards, flipping himself over, hurrying to his feet. He felt O’Malley’s hands slap and paw for purchase on his pant legs, his ankles, then slip away as he bolted for the infirmary door.
Though he reached it, he heard the thunder of footsteps in heavy pursuit, felt the thrumming in the floor beneath him as O’Malley approached, and he whirled, again swinging the IV stand. This time, O’Malley ducked around the blow and grabbed the shaft. He jerked against the pole, incredibly strong, and Andrew heard a sharp, metallic snap as it broke in two. He staggered back, blinking in wide-eyed, stricken shock at the severed remnant of metal in his hand.
Oh, shit.
O’Malley seized him by the throat, clamping down with a powerful ferocity that made Moore’s earlier stranglehold seem now like a snuggle. Andrew gulped, jerked off his feet and into O’Malley’s face, close enough to feel the sharp, moist huff of his breath, close enough so that when he bared his teeth and hissed again, droplets of mucous and spit peppered his cheeks.