The world had shrunk to the four walls of her apartment, and the constant, low sound of Troy's suffering.
It wasn't screaming anymore. The first two days had been screams, raw, animal sounds of pain that had the neighbors pounding on the walls until she'd screamed back at them to go to hell. Now, it was a low, continuous moan, punctuated by the sound of things breaking in his bedroom. A sound of pure, unending agony.
Lacey leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the bedroom door. The scratches on her arm, now hidden under a bandage, throbbed with a deep, sick heat. The skin around them was an angry, purplish-red, threaded with dark veins that seemed to have grown overnight.
"Troy?" she called softly, her voice hoarse. "I brought you some water."
A guttural snarl was her only answer, followed by a heavy thud as something—probably the lamp—shattered against the door from the inside. She flinched back.
This wasn't the flu. The doctor at the urgent care clinic, after giving her a tetanus shot and a prescription for antibiotics she couldn't afford, had said it was a "virulent bacterial infection," but his eyes had been uncertain. The way Troy was changing... it wasn't medical. It was metamorphic.
She remembered the boy he used to be. The one with the easy smile who'd charmed her at the Fall Creek Diner, who'd talked about getting out of this town on a baseball scholarship. That boy was gone, buried under the bitterness of a shattered shoulder and a dead future. The man who remained was harder, angrier. But he was still her Troy.
Now, even that man was being burned away.
She had to get help. Real help.
Ignoring the shouted warnings from the bedroom, she grabbed her keys and drove to the one place she thought might have answers: Troy's father's house on the edge of town.
Raymond's small, clapboard house was dark, the yard overgrown. His old pickup truck was gone. She knocked, her knuckles rapping a frantic rhythm against the peeling paint.
The door swung open. Raymond stood there, a tall, gaunt man who always smelled of motor oil and regret. His face was pale, his eyes wide with a fear she recognized.
"Lacey," he breathed. "Thank God. Is he...?"
"It's getting worse, Ray," she said, tears finally spilling over. "He's so strong. He's breaking things. I don't know what to do."
Raymond's gaze dropped to the bandage on her arm. "Did he...?"
"It was an accident," she said quickly, pulling her sleeve down. "He was delirious. He didn't mean it."
A strange look crossed Raymond's face—not quite pity, but something closer to resignation. He stepped back, gesturing for her to come inside. The house was a mess, but on the kitchen table, something was laid out with meticulous care: a heavy-duty hunting rifle, a box of shells, and a long, wicked-looking hunting knife.
"Ray?" Lacey asked, her blood running cold.
"I went to see him yesterday," Raymond said, his voice flat. "Tried to talk some sense into him. He... he threw me across the room. Like I was nothing." He touched a spectacular purple bruise on his jaw. "His eyes, Lacey. They were... yellow."
The word hung in the air, absurd and terrifying.
"What are you saying?" she whispered.
"I'm saying my boy is gone," Raymond said, his voice cracking. "And whatever is in my house... it's not him. It's a sickness. A dangerous one." He picked up the rifle, his hands trembling slightly. "I'm gonna put him down. It's the only mercy left."
"NO!" Lacey screamed, launching herself at him, grabbing for the gun. "You can't! He's your son!"
They struggled, a desperate, clumsy dance in the cramped kitchen. Raymond was stronger, but Lacey was fueled by a wild, protective terror. She clawed at his hands, sobbing. "He's sick! We have to help him!"
In the struggle, her bandage ripped loose. The ugly, infected scratches were exposed to the air.
Raymond saw them. He froze, his eyes widening in horror. He shoved her away, not with anger, but with revulsion. "Get out," he whispered.
"Ray, please—"
"GET OUT!" he roared, leveling the rifle at her. His eyes were wide with a new fear. The fear of her. "Look at your arm! You're sick too! It's spreading! Now get away from me before I put you down with him!"
The world tilted. Stumbling backward, Lacey fled the house, the sound of Raymond bolting the door behind her echoing like a gunshot. She was poison. A vector.
She drove back to the apartment on autopilot, the world outside the windshield seeming fuzzy, distant. The heat in her arm was spreading, a fever blooming in her veins. She felt a strange, new sensation underneath the sickness: a low, cellular hum, a pull towards... something. Towards home.
When she opened the apartment door, the silence was worse than the noise.
The bedroom door was splintered, hanging from one hinge. She crept inside.
The room was a wreck. The mattress was shredded, the walls gouged as if by claws. And Troy was gone. The window was smashed outward.
He had left her.
A wave of dizziness washed over her, so strong she collapsed to her knees amidst the wreckage. The hum inside her grew louder. It wasn't a pull towards Troy anymore. It was a pull towards the others. She could feel them now, faintly, like stars in a dark sky—scattered points of the same feverish agony she felt. One cluster felt strong, dominant. A burning signal coming from the center of town.
But another feeling was rising, faster and more urgent than the pull. A deep, grinding emptiness in her gut. A hunger. The thought of the cold water she'd brought for Troy made her nauseous. She needed... something else. Something warm.
She stumbled into the kitchen, her vision blurring at the edges. She yanked open the fridge. The light was too bright. The smell of old leftovers was overwhelming. Her eyes landed on a package of raw hamburger meat for the spaghetti she'd planned to make.
Without a thought, her hands, moving with a will of their own, tore open the plastic. She shoved a handful of the cold, red ground beef into her mouth. It was the most glorious, vital thing she had ever tasted. It wasn't enough.
The hunger roared.
She needed it fresh. She needed it alive.
Her yellow-tinged eyes, wide with a terror that was no longer entirely her own, scanned the wrecked apartment. They landed on the cage in the corner. Inside, her rabbit, Thumper, twitched its nose, watching her.
A low, guttural sound escaped Lacey's throat—a sound she'd only ever heard from behind a locked door.
She crawled across the floor towards the cage.
The last flicker of the girl who loved the boy with the easy smile was extinguished not by a bang, but by a whimper, and the sound of a small, fragile neck snapping.
The infection had its first true convert. Not a victim of a bite, but a soul eroded by love, fear, and a few, fateful scratches. The town's central nervous system was now a fully conscious, hungry part of the hive. And she was ready to serve her new king.