Bryce sat down on the rock butted against the one he stood on. Its slightly higher elevation allowed him to sit, one ankle over the other knee, to more closely study his foot.
“It really hurts!” he said, hysteria creeping into his voice.
“Eva, move!” Mike ordered, already skipping back toward them. “Don’t get them on you!”
“I …” Eva felt like she was in shock. “What do we do?”
Bryce tapped her waist gently with one hand. “Do it, Eva. Move away, please.”
Eva stepped to a stone a few feet closer to the tree line, let Mike slip past her on his way to Bryce. Stacy hadn’t moved, but watched it all from nearby, a dispassionate observer.
Are they on me, too?
Eva pulled one foot from her sandal, inspected it.
Nothing.
She repeated it with the other foot, felt a rush of guilt-laced relief to see it was also clear.
Bryce, meanwhile, was beginning to panic.
“Help me!” he yelled at Mike, and Eva could see whatever had been eating at the bottom of his foot had moved upward—streaking black lines ran over the top of the foot, the ankle, along the side of one calf. “It really hurts, man. I can feel them eating me …. Fuck, I can feel them crawling underneath.”
The bottom of Bryce’s foot was completely black and bubbling, frantic with the invading creatures. The skin looked like burnt paper, and the dark lines continued to move steadily up his leg.
“Here.” Mike handed Bryce the knife, handle-first. “See if you can … shit man, see if you can scrape them off or something. Don’t let them get higher.”
“Bryce,” Eva cried, his name coming out like a sob as she watched his eyes turned wide and terrified, his lips quiver. He looked up at her, face red and wild, tears streaming down his face. Then he grabbed the handle of the extended knife and began cutting.
He began by scraping the bottom of his foot, using the flat of the blade as a straightedge, heel-to-toe.
Black, bug-infested flakes fell from his foot to the stones. Mike took a giant step back, isolating Bryce and whatever was being peeled off him.
Rivulets of blood began to run off the foot where the flesh had come away. “I think I’m getting them!” he yelled. “It hurts, though. Really fucking hurts.” He scraped again, revealing more red flesh, more of the dead, blackened skin falling in wet, leaf-sized patches.
One black tendril needling up his thigh had now traveled beneath the opening of his suit. Bryce jerked the fabric back toward his crotch. He stuck the tip of the knife into the top of the festering line as it crossed to his inner thigh, teeth gritted, sweat and tears dripping off his face.
“I don’t know how ….”
“Try ….” Mike swallowed. More softly, he continued. “I don’t know, brother. Try cutting them out I guess.”
Bryce, blood now flowing freely from his foot, began cutting along one of the black lines. More blood sprang through the cuts, but the tiny creatures didn’t fall away, they multiplied, as if the fresh blood only energized their frenzied feasting.
From one heartbeat to the next, the stripe on his leg widened, darted up past his crotch and emerged from the waistband of his suit, crisscrossing over his stomach.
“Aah!” he screamed, throwing his head back. “Oh God, no please!”
He began stabbing at his leg with abandon.
“No! Bryce, stop!” Eva yelled, and then suddenly there were arms around her, turning her around and holding her tight. The skin was soft, fragrant. Female.
Not Mike then, but Stacy. She of the perpetual frown, the seeming distaste, was now keeping Eva’s face tucked into her shoulder, her voice soft and urgent in her ear.
“Don’t look, Eva. Whatever you do, don’t look.”
Bryce continued to scream as they all stood nearby, helpless.
“I have to!” Eva said into Stacy’s shoulder. “I have to see him!”
She struggled free of the woman’s grasp and twisted around.
And screamed.
Bryce was covered in them. His chest, arms, shoulders…all boiling with black, swarming infestation. His jaw opened and closed soundlessly, his eyes bloodshot and vacant. The knife, Eva noticed, was stuck deep into one shriveling thigh.
“Get back, Mike,” Stacy said through her own tears. “For God’s sake, get away from him.”
“The knife ….” Mike said lamely.
“Fuck the knife!” Stacy screamed, and Mike nodded and stepped another rock away from where Bryce was sitting, the creatures running through him like water, devouring his flesh so fast that he appeared shrink before their eyes.
Eva put her face into her hands and sobbed. She couldn’t look at him anymore. Part of her—a part that was likely dead forever—wondered if he’d had an engagement ring in the pocket of that swimsuit, tucked into the pocket on the inside of the waistband that you used for keys when you couldn’t leave them safely on shore. Maybe she could check, later, after the rest of him was gone—had been eaten—maybe then she could check for a ring.
They wouldn’t eat the suit, would they? It was such a stupid question, she thought. I must be in shock, because otherwise I’d still be screaming. Screaming because my boyfriend, the man I share my bed with, is turning black and crispy just a few feet away, being eaten alive, in fact. How very odd it all is. Yes … I’d surely be screaming.
But she was screaming. And Stacy clutched her as best she could, grabbed her and held her while she wailed and wept and baked beneath the hot, careless sun.
