“An…gel…kins?” I barely heard the moan.
“Here, Dad!” I gasped out. “I…hear a helicopter. Can you wave your arms…or something?”
He floundered an arm out of the water in a weak wave. “If I…die…”
“You’re not gonna die!” I yelled at him, though it came out as more of a strangled croak. Shit, my voice was going all raspy. I was going to start falling apart soon.
Without any warning, the branch I held gave way. I let out a startled shout as the current sucked us away, but only a second later something punched me in the back, and I jerked to a hard stop. Oddly, I didn’t have any problem staying afloat, but when I fumbled my free hand behind me to see what I was stuck on I realized why. I was wedged in the fork of a tree branch right below the surface. Except that one side of the fork was, well, in me.
Hunger flared hot and bright, telling me quite clearly that the branch had done some serious damage. Sudden worry gripped me, and I dragged a hand along the front of my torso, shuddering in relief once I confirmed that the branch hadn’t penetrated and hurt my dad as well.
He still struggled to wave the approaching helicopter down. I tried to lift the arm that wasn’t clamped around his waist, but my movements were too sluggish to be worth much. Instead I wrapped my legs around him and fought the intense rising hunger. I still had two bottles of brains in the side pocket of my pants, but there was zero way to get them out now without risking losing them or my grip on my dad.
The helicopter swept low toward us…and then over and past while I stifled a scream of frustration. They didn’t see us!
My dad let his arm flop back into the water. “Now what?” he asked, voice weak and barely audible. Blood seeped through his hair on the back of his head, and I took in the scent of the brain beneath it.
Now what? I echoed, then inhaled deeply. Everything slowed down. The roaring rush of the water receded to a murmur. Peripheral vision dimmed as though all light gathered into that single mouthwatering focal point in front of me. Dad? Brains. My breath hissed as I looked for something to bash the head against. Branch. I snarled in deep satisfaction, shifted my grip to hold my meal between my hands. Rushing water tried to pull it from me, steal it, and I held tighter, twisted toward the branch.
“Angel?” The sound vibrated against my chest. “Angel, what—?” Stopped me. The smell called me. That voice…I screamed in frustration. An annoying thup-thup thundered overhead, wind whipping, water thrashing. I raked my gaze upward, ready to scream my defiance. Focused. Helicopter? Helicopter. I clung to the bizarre concept like a lifeline and expanded on it. Flood. Dad. Hands on my dad’s head. No! I released it and wrapped my arms around his waist, breath whistling through my teeth with my conscious effort to hold off biting at the base of his skull.
I love you dad I love you dad I love you dad helicopter here I love you just a minute I can hold on just a minute I love you dad I love you dad I love you I love you I love you I love you
Someone tried to take my dad my meal my dad from me. I grabbed for what he cut, pants jacket brain bottles mine, wrapped it around my numb fist. Mine. I clawed at the man as he ripped my dad away, rose impossibly in the air. I screamed, reached for him. Nothing. Nothing.
I sank back, breath gurgling. Going still. Going quiet. Conserving. Waiting. An irresistible scent filling my senses, getting closer. Brains. I squinted against the wind as my prey descended toward me, my lips pulled back from my teeth in an eager snarl. I scrabbled against the tree branch, struggled to lunge and attack, rend and feast. He leaned toward me, and I threw my arm up, grabbed his ankle, pulled. Snapped at him. He reached, clamped my jaw in his hand, forced something between my teeth. My cry of rage died away as the leathery lump registered.
Brains. Chewy hunk of brains yes yes yes. My hand went to my mouth, held the chunk in place. Gnawed. Brains. Better, yes. Oh god. Yes. I’m…Me. I’m Me.
* * *
By the time I chewed and chewed and swallowed the brain-lump down, a hint of coherent thought returned to let me know I was almost up the cable with my rescuer. The desperate urge to rip his brain from his skull had eased to Gee, He Sure Smells Yummy, but…
Oh my god. Dad? Nausea and worry swept through me. Dad.
As soon as I neared the open side door of the helicopter, strong hands grabbed me and hauled me the rest of the way in. Someone else wrapped a blanket around me and shoved an already-opened packet of brains into my free hand. I greedily sucked it down and as soon as I finished that one, the empty was yanked from my grasp and replaced with a fresh one. My gut did a strange lurch, and I realized that my innards were still in the process of healing from the serious damage caused by the tree branch.
After finishing the second packet, I regained the ability to actually pay attention to something besides my own hunger. My left hand was locked in a death-grip around my pants with its two bottles of brains. Good ole parasite survival instinct must’ve kicked in to grab them when the rescuer cut the jacket sleeve to free my dad. I unclenched my fingers and finally took a look around.
I didn’t know crap about helicopters, but this one looked military: utilitarian grey, with two seats for crew members up near the cabin; I was buckled into one of four fold-down seats at the back, though I didn’t remember any of that happening. My dad was in the seat right beside me. He had a blanket around him and held a towel to the back of his head. He met my eyes, gave me a tremulous smile. I did my best to return it. I didn’t know how much of my out-of-controlness he’d seen, but I sure as hell hoped not much. Thankfully, he’d been kinda out of it for the worst of the monster-mode. For that matter, so had I.
But I had been the monster for a while. If the helicopter hadn’t returned, would I have been able to control myself? Would I have killed and eaten my own father? A shiver wracked me. I knew the truth, and it was a punch in the gut.
I almost ate my dad. The memory went through me like a knife. The scent, the drive to do whatever I had to do to get those brains—my dad’s brains. No way could I have kept on living if I’d given in to the hunger and killed him. Or was suicide even an option? I had a feeling the survival responses of the parasite wouldn’t make it easy.
But I didn’t hurt him, I reminded myself. Yeah, the helicopter had returned in the nick of time, but I’d managed to hold on for those precious few minutes, even with a goddamn tree stuck through my back. Props to stubborn-bitch-willpower for saving the day.
I hugged the blanket around myself and accepted a third packet from the rescuer. Might as well eat their supply of brains instead of going into the two bottles in my pants, especially since I had no idea how long I’d need those bottles to last. Whoever these people were, they sure as hell knew how to deal with hungry zombies, right down to having chewy brain-cakes on hand to keep the hunger distracted.
Shifting, I moved to sit closer to my dad. The thwupping roar of the chopper made it impossible to have a conversation, but I mouthed You okay? and he nodded in response. He pulled the towel away from his head, looked at the blood staining it. Scowling, I turned his head so I could look at the wound. I saw his lips move, and I had no doubt he was cussing me, but he didn’t resist. To my relief it didn’t look too bad. Probably wouldn’t need stitches, but I still intended to get someone with actual medical training to look at it once we got wherever we were going.
I released his head, gave him a quick hug, then made a comical effort to get my wet pants back on. I gave up after half a minute of contortions and simply tied the legs around my waist, wrapped the blanket around me best I could, and sighed. Looked like I was getting rescued in my undies after all. Thank god I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a thong to bed.
My dad and I huddled close together for warmth and comfort as the helicopter circled the area. Two more times it descended to pluck people from the still-raging waters. The neighbors from across the street who’d called the cops on us more than once for domestic disputes. A single mom who lived nearby and her fourteen-year-old son who I suspected was responsible for the disappearance of tools from our shed. Petty neighborhood squabbles were forgotten as we helped each other get settled and offered comfort as we could.
Finally the pilot seemed to feel that either there were no others needing rescue, or there wasn’t enough room for more. The doors closed, and I felt us gain altitude. I wrapped an arm around my dad, shut my eyes, and tried not to think of this as the end of our world.
* * *
I opened my eyes when we touched down with little more than a light jostling. Whoever the pilot was, he was damn good. The engines wound down, and the silence when they stopped seemed unnatural after the din of before.
When the doors opened, our rescuers efficiently off-loaded us and passed us into the care of waiting emergency workers and Red Cross personnel. It took a few minutes for my surroundings to sink in, and then I registered that we were in a parking lot at Tucker Point High School. About twenty yards from the helicopter, several Red Cross vehicles clustered, one marked Disaster Relief. Tucker Point High was always used as a shelter during hurricanes, so it made sense for it to be used for this as well. A vague and misplaced worry wound through me about how the movie people would do their filming with flood victims sheltering here and getting in their way, but then I decided that the school was no doubt more than big enough to accommodate everyone, and I surely had more important things to worry about. But I didn’t want to worry about the more important things. Not yet.
I kept the blanket wrapped around my waist and an arm around my dad, demanded that someone check out his head and snarled that I was fine. No one seemed to take any offense, and I dimly realized that I probably had an eyes-wide-in-shock look about me.
After asking a few pointed questions, I managed to learn that, earlier in the morning, engineers attempted to partially open the spillway in order to carefully bleed-off the overflowing Kreeger River down Cole Bayou and, eventually, out into the swamp. That would have been fine and dandy and would have caused a few extra feet of water at the most, except that minutes after the first bay opened, the entire aged structure gave way. In one gigantic rush, pretty much all the excess water in the Kreeger River diverted down Cole Bayou. The Army Corps of Engineers was already at work, though the general consensus seemed to be that, at this point, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the river to drop below flood stage.