Monster Island(90)

Gary’s stomach roiled at the thought. A dozen defenses for his actions sprung to his mind but he abandoned them at once-they were false. Dekalb was right, he had chosen to be who he was. It changed nothing. Anger clawed its way out of Gary’s chest and into his mouth. He felt like spitting. “You still don’t get it, Dekalb. I’m not the villain here. I’m not a f*ckingmonster. People have been trying to kill me almost since the day I was reborn-Ayaan and her girl scout troop from hell. Marisol, and because of Marisol, Jack over there. You came here to kill me today. There were others you don’t even know about-one guy I thought was my friend, or at least my teacher. Why? Because I’m unclean, unnatural? Because I’m evil? I’m not any of those things. I’m justhungry,” Gary roared. “I have a right to exist, a right to stay alive as long as I can and that means I have to eat. That means I have aright toeat.” drip.

“You can judge me all you want but here we are. I win. I’m going to live forever-and you’re going to die.” drip.

Jack’s body began to convulse, the muscles staging a final protest. He quivered on his line, his shoulder smacking against the wall and sending him spinning. His mouth opened and a liquid cry of horror came out, a raw, wet animal sound that trailed off into a rattle. Partly the symphony of the damned and partly the wail of a newborn baby.

Vomit flowed out of his nose and mouth. His chest gave one last spasmodic heave and then he just stopped. His systems shut down. He died.

“You have about a minute before he reanimates,” Gary suggested, both of them staring at the brand new corpse. “Any last requests?”

Dekalb laughed, a bitter explosive sound. He reached into his pocket and grabbed something there. Gary stirred but relaxed when he saw what Dekalb had found-a hand-rolled cigarette and a pack of matches.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Gary giggled.

“If I’m going to start, now’s the time.” He tucked the cigarette between his lips and opened the matchbook. “Osman-you never met him-gave this to me before I left Governors Island. He said it would relax me. Maybe it’ll make it less painful to be eaten alive. But that would ruin your fun, wouldn’t it?”

Gary lifted one dripping arm in a dismissive gesture. “I’m not acomplete *. Go for it. A last act of mercy.”

“Thanks.” Dekalb tore one of the paper matches free and put the head against the striking strip on the matchbook cover. “By the way, somebody owes you an apology.”

“Oh?”

Dekalb nodded, his absurd joint bobbing in his mouth. “Yeah. Your teachers in med school. They forgot to tell you that formalin is highly flammable.” The match struck and lit with a tiny hiss. Dekalb snapped it away from himself in a fluttering arc that dropped it right into Gary’s bathtub.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Seventeen


The flammable liquid in Gary’s bathtub ignited all at once with a greatFFFHWOOMP ing noise as all the air in the room was sucked into the conflagration. A fireball of incredible light and heat shot upward through the open ceiling while everything in the room tried to catch fire at once. I raised my arms to protect my face as light and heat roared out at me as I tried to catch my breath. My feet left the floor and everything turned over on me and I could feel the hair on my forearms curl and singe. I lowered my arms and found myself on my back.

Painfully I sat up until I could see Gary again. He had become a pillar of molten flame. His enormous overstuffed body shook convulsively as burning fat seeped from his broken skin and dribbled down his limbs like candle wax.

As I stared-and believe me, I was staring, there was a brutal hypnotic quality about the horror before me that would not let me go-he struggled to recover himself, to regain control of his body. The pain… I can’t describe the pain he felt. No one could, no one living. Human beings don’t ever experience being burned to death, not the same way Gary did. Our brains can’t take the overwhelming stimulus. We black out and are spared the worst of the misery.

The dead don’t sleep. They don’t faint, either. Gary was dying in the most excruciating way possible but he was not allowed the mercy of unconsciousness. I could see him trying to regain control of his rebel body, to fight through the pain. His hands flexed, his arms came down. He was trying to grab something. Anything. Me.

I barely rolled out of the way as a massive burning arm slammed down on the flagstones beside me. I could feel the heat coming off of Gary, I could feel the super-heated air displaced by his strike. My feet pushed hard to get underneath me, my arms flexed to lift me off the ground. If I didn’t get up to a standing posture in the next second I was doomed.