The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast - Holiday Hiatus #2

Episode Date: December 29, 2019

The show is taking a holiday break this week but we're featuring classic tales from Season 13. "Can Spiders Actually Lay Eggs Under Human Skin?" written by Rene Rehn (Story starts around 00:02:20) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Narrator – Addison Peacock, Lisa – Nichole Goodnight, Nurse – Mary Murphy "Grunts" written by Neil Noon (Story starts around 00:33:30) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: General Consuela Velez – Nikolle Doolin, Specialist Gordy Pickford – Graham Rowat, Specialist Walter Stroheim – Kyle Akers, Specialist Magz Maloney – Erin Lillis Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about the Euro 2020 Live Tour   Click here to learn more about Rene Rehn   Click here to learn more about Neil Noon   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone "Holiday Hiatus" illustration courtesy of Krista Neubert Audio program ©2018-2019 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Close our eyes. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast video store. I'm David Cummings. We're resting up for New Year's Eve this week, so our VCR is ready to play two classic stories from season past 13 episodes. As we prepare to bid farewell to 2019

and usher in a new decade, we reflect back on the year that was. We have a couple of fun stories we do. did all the way back in 2019 for you. And we look forward to 2020. And speaking of, just a reminder that we're mere weeks

away from the start of our Euro 2020 live tour. There are still tickets available to our shows in the UK and across the continent. Just go to the no sleeppodcast.com slash tour for tickets and details. So

should old acquaintance be forgot? We hope you enjoy. these tales. Now turn down the lights and grab the remote because it's time for our feature presentation. In our first tale, we encounter, well, spiders. Arachnophobia can be a challenging fear. Those horrible eight-legged creatures are everywhere, in cracks, in holes beneath the floorboards. But in this tale, shared with us by author René Ren, we're asked to consider a another location in which spiders might make their home. Performing this tale are Addison Peacock, Nicole Goodnight, and Mary Murphy.

So hug your body pillows tight, keep a can of insect repellent on hand, and dare to ask, can spiders lay eggs under human skin? I'm sure what's going on here anymore. Things got a bit out of hand. I'm tired. anxious, but I just want to finish getting my story out there. This whole mess started only a few days ago with a damned spider, as always. You see, I suffer from a severe case of arachnophobia.

I can't even look at pictures of spiders without despairing and panicking. Even when I'm talking about them, there's this lurking, fear in the back of my mind. One of my friends once thought it was hilarious to scare me with a plastic spider. It freaked me out so bad that I jumped up, rushed off, and hit my head against the closet. I ended up needing three stitches and had to spend half the night at the hospital. Good going, Steve. You really outdid yourself there. Now, where was I?

Right. Saturday. I had planned to spend the weekend relaxing and unwinding after a long and stressful week. This idea evaporated the moment I found a spider web. It was right next to a tiny hole in the door frame that led into the kitchen. I vacuumed it away and sealed the hole as best as I could. I told myself, this was all that was necessary. My mind, of course, wouldn't have it. Paranoia crept back in like the imaginary spiders

it told me had invaded my apartment. It wasn't long before I started hearing the sounds of small, skittering spider legs. It wasn't half an hour later that I started to check the whole place. After that, I ended up vacuuming and cleaning the entire apartment twice. My friends think I'm suffering from OCD, but that's not it. I just can't help but go through the place meticulously. This time, like so many before, I found nothing.

No webs, no spiders. When I went to bed, I was still somewhat anxious. Finding nothing could mean there were no spiders around, but it could very well mean that I'd simply not found them. Soon enough, my thoughts went in a different direction. What about that hole in the wall? Did it mean there were spiders inside? I lay in bed telling myself I was plain silly.

There was no way spiders could dig, especially not through walls. Still, I felt the familiar rush of anxiety. My heart rate went up, and I started to feel dizzy like so many times before. I must have laid in bed for at least an hour, occasionally shaking. before I drifted off into an uneasy sleep. I was woken up by noise all around me. As I lay in bed, it felt as if the walls around me had become alive.

They were shaking and breathing. While I still tried to understand what was going on, I heard the sound of millions of tiny, skittering legs. Then the walls burst open, and I was drowned under a wave of eight-legged horrors. The moment I woke up, I jumped off the bed, swatting and beating at my body before I realized it had all been a dream. I fell to the floor, sobbing, hugging my body, and cursing my brain for conjuring up this nightmare. I don't remember how long it took me to calm down.

Post of Sunday was a blur that I spent huddled up into blankets in the center of my living room. I was a shaking and shivering mess. One minute I told myself there were no spiders in the walls, the next I was listening for the tiniest sounds around me. I'm not sure if I even ate anything that day. In the end, I must have passed out from sheer exhaustion on Sunday evening. When I woke up on Monday morning, I was mostly myself again. I was still somewhat wary of the walls, but my panic attack had subsided. I guess my brain realized how silly it was to be afraid.

of them. Somewhat tired and still scatterbrained, I dropped my keys. They vanished behind a small cupboard in my hallway. Cursing at myself, I crouched down to find them. I reached out with my hand and felt around. Right at that moment, I felt something brush over my skin. I yelled up in surprise and pulled my arm back. Shop turned into absolute panic when I saw a spider. sitting on my right arm. I screamed, shook the arm, and then started beating down at the spider with my left hand. I was out of it,

hitting the arm over and over again, swatting to get rid of the spider. The moment it finally fell to the ground, I stomped on it over and over again. Only when nothing but a disgusting mush remained did I rush to the bathroom. I let warm water run over my arm while scrubbing it desperately with a washcloth.

It was at this moment that I saw a tiny wound. At first I told myself I was wrong. It had to be a mistake. I had scrubbed my arm too hard. Nothing else. After a while, I couldn't deny my paranoia anymore. There was absolutely no doubt. It was a spider bite.

The moment I started attacking the spider, it must have bitten me. My mind was running at lightning speed. What if it had been a poisonous spider? Was there poison pumping through my veins right at this moment? I felt weird almost instantly. My heartbeat sped up and I felt short of breath. The moment I stepped out of the bathroom, I felt dizzy, so much that I had to lean against the wall for a beat.

In the hallway, I pushed the damn cupboard over, picked up the keys, and rushed outside. I needed fresh air. But most importantly, there was a doctor's office nearby. My body was shaking, and it felt as if my mind was slowing down. For a moment, my vision seemed to go blurry. I told myself it was anxiety, a panic attack, that I had to calm down. There was this creeping voice in the back of my mind, though.

What if it's poison? What if that spider was dangerous? What if you're dying right now? What then, Sandra? minutes later I was pacing back and forth at the doctor's office. A nurse hurried over to me. Ma'am, what's wrong? What's the problem?

Please try and stay calm, ma'am. We can help you. We just need to know what the problem is. I couldn't stand still, though. The moment I stopped, my heart rate went up. Breathing became harder, and my arms and legs started to feel all tingly. No, I had to keep moving. Only after a while was I able to get the words out

I was I was bitten By Bitten by what ma'am I A spider spider bite It took her a few moments to understand what was going on

Then she came back and gave me a small shot Everything's going to be fine calm, deep breaths. It's okay. The shot will help. Nothing bad's going to happen. We've got you. Gently, she guided me to a bench and sat me down.

Do you remember anything about the creature? Any kind of marks on her? Any distinguishing features, I guess. I don't remember. I kind of... I just... I mimed a splatting. motion with my unbitten hand. The nurse smiled softly, like she understood. I could see a faint

shiver run through her body, and I felt like I'd found a kindred spirit in my hatred of the creatures. It was a few minutes later that the doctor came to see me. He assured me that there was no such thing as venomous spiders around here, at least not the lethal type. He even told me that the ones who even were venomous at all were rarely sighted. in our area. He took only a short look at my arm, smiled, and told me nothing was wrong with it. The wound was small, and it looked like I'd only scratched it open myself. No sign of any poison.

He prescribed me a sort of ointment that would help treat the wound and keep it free from infection. What he was more concerned about was my mental state. He asked me if I was seeing a psychiatrist, and, if I was often suffering from episodes like this one. It wasn't normal at all, not even when considering my arachnophobia. I hated this type of talk ever since I was a little girl when my mom had dragged me from one psychiatrist to the next. I made a few excuses, ripped the prescription for the ointment from his hands, and made my way

out. Once I'd gotten the ointment from a nearby pharmacy, I made my way back home. When I opened the apartment door, it didn't feel like home at all. It felt as if the place had been invaded by an invisible enemy that was lurking in the shadows. I strode towards my bathroom, scanned each surface, and then locked the door behind me. Once I felt safe, I started to administer the ointment. I know I used too much of it, and bandaging up the arm was ridiculous. Still, it helped to calm me down at least a bit.

When I still hadn't been able to calm down by noon, I gave my friend Lisa a call, pacing back and forth as I waited for her to answer. Lisa and I go back forever. We became friends back in middle school and have been hanging out ever since. We were even going to university together. She and I couldn't be more different.

Lisa is the fun, outgoing, type, while I am an anxious introvert. The only thing we had in common was that we both smoked weed. The moment she picked up, I asked her if she had anything that could help me calm down. Maybe weed or maybe something else. Something a bit stronger. I knew Lisa had a way of getting things. At first, she laughed at my freak out over a mere spider bite.

When I told her about my reaction, though, Lisa became. She said she'd come over later today and bring something that she was sure would help. I stayed in the bathroom for a while longer, but then I finally risked making my way back to the living room and my laptop. At first I went on YouTube, put on some music, and watched a few random videos. Soon enough, curiosity overcame me, and I looked up information about spider bites. The images I found. I was never one of those people who could look at Gore, but what I saw there, I'm not sure what it was. It might have been an infected wound or something.

There was one thing I read that made me close the lid of the laptop in an instant. I read on a less than legit-looking site that spiders could lay eggs under human skin. That's bullshit. It's an urban legend and nothing else. There's no such thing. And even if there's no way we'd have anything like that here, I'd have heard of it happening. I almost jumped up. I opened the door and relief flooded me at the sight of Lisa's familiar grin.

Quickly, though, her smile dropped. Jesus, what's the matter with you? Can spiders lay eggs under human skin? What the hell, Sandra? What did you do? Watch some shitty horror movie or something? No, I've read things on the internet. Oh, God, that's even worse. Don't read about things on the internet, okay?

Yeah, but what if... No, buts. You'll always find the worst cases online. I'm dead serious. A bump on the arm? You need an amputation. A slight headache, dizziness, brain tumor. It's always the same.

Rule number one, Sandra, especially for... you, never Google any symptoms online. I know, Lisa. You're fine, silly girl. Calm down, will you? Jesus, you're a mess today. Lisa stayed over for almost two hours. She tried her hardest to tell me a couple of funny stories to take my mind off things.

It helped, at least for a bit. She'd also brought me an unmarked container. of pills. She told me they were anxiety pills that a friend of hers have given her. They'll pretty much knock you out instantly, so be careful with them. I told myself I'd wait till evening. If they'd really knock me out, it was a chance to get a good night's sleep for once. I put on a random show and tried to relax. While I watched a pretty cast of high school students talk about teenage woes, my mind started to wonder. Those things I'd read, could they be real? I pulled the bandages off my

arm to have a look. I was scared of what I'd find and shivered before I removed the last layer. For a moment, one of the gruesome images I'd seen popped up in my mind again. What I saw was the complete opposite. It was a tiny, almost invisible swelling. There was nothing terrible about it at all. I almost laughed when I saw it When I pressed it for a bit Some blood came out and it stung a bit But there was nothing weird about it I started to tear at the corner of the skin

All it did was to make it sting more And increase the bleeding After a while I had to force myself to stop I looked at what used to be a small wound And was now almost twice the size Stop toying with it, you idiot. While I put the bandages back on, I decided to take one of Lisa's pills. Otherwise, I might start messing with the wound again.

I took one out, swallowed it, and put the container back into my pocket. So much for waiting till evening. It took about a half an hour, but I started to calm down. And soon I felt quiet, almost tired. I remembered that I'd not eaten. anything due to all my anxiety, but all I could think about was resting. I told myself that I'd take a nap and eat something once I was awake again. I'm not sure when exactly I'd fallen asleep, but it was already nighttime when I woke up again. I was all sweaty and suffering from a terrible

headache. The moment I moved around in bed, I felt exhausted and hot, almost as if I was burning up. I made my way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and took some ibuprofen to fight the headache. The moment I was about to go back to my bedroom, I noticed something strange. At first I thought I imagined it, but then I looked closer and confirmed. It looked as if there was a bump below the bandages, all swollen up. As I stared at it, the memory of a dream crissue. in the dream I had... No, there'd been something wrong with me.

The moment I saw the bump on my arm again, memories flooded my mind. I dreamed about spiders in my arms and legs. And being eaten alive by them, I clung to the sink, almost throwing up. I took another one of Lisa's pills and told myself I should go back to bed. But I couldn't.

I couldn't help it. I ripped the bandages off my arm and found a bump below. It was almost a sort of giant, pulsating blister. I gagged. And when I had a closer look, I saw something moving inside of it, below the skin. It couldn't be. It couldn't be. I almost bumped into the doorframe on my way towards the kitchen. I had dark spots in front of my eyes as I ran down the hallway,

and the moment I made it to the kitchen, I slumped down on the floor. I felt dizzy. My whole body seemed to be pulsating now. The moment I could move again, I grabbed hold of a knife from the counter. It almost slipped from my hand twice while I stared at the disgusting bump on my arm. Something was definitely moving inside of it. I didn't hesitate another moment before I cut into it. The pain was much more excruciating than I'd expected.

As the blood ran down my arm in warm gushes, I saw something else. Something much, much worse. Tiny white things came flooding forward with the blood. Little pale flecks among the red. Then, just as the white specks dissipated, I saw the small spiders that came. crawling out of my body. The knife clattered from my hand, and I could only stare at it in horror and disbelief.

The blood, the eggs, and of course, the small spiders. As soon as they crawled free from the wound, they began to bite into the surrounding flesh. Already the creatures were beginning to burrow back below this skin. I dragged myself up, put my arm into the sink, and poured hot. water over it. I clenched my teeth, but soon enough I could only scream in pain as the hot water scalded my arm. I hoped, no, I prayed that it would wash out or burn up all those tiny spiders. After a long minute of almost unbearable pain, I stopped and looked at the arm again. There was still movement, and I could make out tiny tunnels inside of my flesh. I used the knife one of the

knife once more. This time, to cut deeper. After a while, I didn't even feel the pain. I was all dedication. Dedication to finding the spiders inside of my arm. The more I cut, the more tunnels I seemed to discover. I carefully carved away the infected flesh. Tiny hunks of flesh and pieces of skin fell from my arm and onto the ground. I saw the eggs, the spiders, the tunnels. Only once I was sure none of it was left, did I stop. By now I was shaking from a mixture of pain and exhaustion. My whole body felt cold, sweaty, and tingly.

Putting the bandages back on was nothing short of torture. My right arm was now a little more than a hot, pulsating mass of pain. I blocked out at least once while I put the bandages back on. Around and around once done, I noticed the deep gash I'd left in my own arm. I felt sick, anxious, and scared

when I realized what I'd done. I was still bleeding, but had scalding my own flesh somehow lessened the bleeding? I had no idea. I fought my way back to the bedroom. My arm was hard. hurting so much it was unreal. Each step, hell, even the slightest shift, sent waves of pain through me.

Once back in my bedroom, I couldn't help but think about spiders again. What if they were still inside me? Could it be? What if they were crawling through my arm right now, digging their tunnels deeper inside of my body? That moment I felt another surge of anxiety and panic coming to me and took another one of Lisa's pills. After that, I lay in bed for at least an hour, but I couldn't sleep. There was the pain, but there was another thought. What if that spider really came from inside of the wall? What if that spider had dug through the wall to get here? It would be so easy for its young to dig through flesh. God, what if I'm actually right? Still lying in bed with the low light of the lamp next to me. I started to take the bandages off once more. They were wet and sticky with half-dried

blood and almost glued to my flesh. Would there be spiders again? Oh, please let there be none. Please. What I revealed was nothing but a gruesome mess of bloody flesh and whitish, scalded snippets of skin. There were no tunnels, no eggs, and no spiders. There was nothing. There was nothing. I sat there shivering. Had I imagined things? Had I just seen something that wasn't there and then done all this? I didn't know anymore. I laid down again, but I barely closed my eyes when I felt an itch on my leg.

My heart skipped a beat, and I was wide awake. Had I brushed against it just now, or was it something else? I turned on the night lamp and scanned my leg. There it was. On the side of my thigh. Another bump. Don't tell me. Oh God, what the hell, what the hell?

There's no way. The moment I touched it, though, I could feel the movement below. It took me long, painful minutes to get back to the kitchen. This time, I cut without any second thought. I brought the knife down, and the moment the skin ripped open, spiders started to spill out of me. I tried to hit them and swat them away before they were able to dig into my flesh again, but they just vanished. Had there ever been any? What if there are no spiders inside my leg?

I have a fever, right? What if this is a dream? Is any of this even real at all? But what if? I am so sweaty and itchy all over. My body is trembling and I am starting to feel numb. Are they going for my nerves? What if they do it so I can't feel them anymore?

So I think that I'm okay. Does it always been so cold in here? Why is there no pain anymore? I've been here for a while now. I still have the knife and I'm still digging. There's sweat. Wait, no. Blood, all around me.

I still see the spiders from time to time. Whenever I do, I cut. I feel like I am slowly getting them. Most of them are in my right leg, so I've been busy. I feel like there's few of them left anymore. That tingly sensation in my leg is almost gone now. By now, I'm almost searching for them blindly.

I've cut here and there at random. My vision has gone too blurry to see them clearly. I've cut so much, so much work, so tired. The skin is all tangled up and in stripes. The blood still brings them forward. There's so much of it now. But that's good, isn't it? It means that a lot of them aren't in my body anymore at all too clearly anymore.

Fused and exhausted. Tired. I'm going to rest. Our final tale, we confront zombies. We've all heard about zombie apocalypses. We all have a good idea how they might play out, namely lots of people dying. But what would the world be like after a zombie apocalypse? when societies rebuilt and the authorities have a handle on the situation. In this tale, shared with us by author Neil Noon,

we hear about one potential outcome. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin, Graham Rowett, Kyle Akers, and Aaron Lillis. So join us as we hear from four people talking us through the events of a certain incident. You might call them soldiers or grunts. Rolling stop, quiet. In the wake of the outbreak, once we'd got the cities at least to a place where they could run again, although obviously at a lower, slower, older level, the army got a lot of flack for not instantly cremating the infected we'd captured.

I'm not talking about the ones handed over to the medical gang to try and understand what had happened. Of course there was support for that. But everyone had lost so much. All they wanted was to see piles of the bastards burning. All the better if they're still moving. My family lost less than most. I guess because, well, we were rich. There's no point in denying it.

And in the early stages of the collapse, money could still buy things. Guns, supplies. My family even found contractors willing to barricate our ground floor, put up basic siege defenses. Being detached in its own grounds, it was pretty defensible. We had to pay the ones. workers a fortune, of course, but I wonder if they ever got to spend it. I came within one phone call of deserting.

I can say this now, because, I mean, I didn't, did I? Because all that stopped me was, I mean, I had my backpack packed, extra ammo, extra rations, but I got a call from my brother, Robert, where, at home, where I was going. It was, while the next day. The network was still, you know. He just wanted to let me know, I guess. He said that he loved me, and he was glad I was somewhere safe. He meant the base, and not to come looking, because all our loved ones were my parents, my sister, all of them.

Also, he'd been bitten himself. He said, if I ever see you again, Walter, you know what to do. I don't talk about back then. I'm really just focused on a better future or whatever. I say I lost less than most, which is true. And I'm grateful, absolutely. But still, the full half of the family didn't make it. Even then, on the anniversary every year, we give prayers of thanks.

At least they were only killed. They didn't go over. Our priest didn't believe in having funerals for victims who'd been bitten, but not, well, executed, basically. called this prick creeping out of the crypt where he'd hid for the whole outbreak to say if they're not dead and by dead he meant not moving they can't go to heaven i said where the fuck in the bible doesn't say anything about anything like this but they pulled me off of him before he could answer the army's position was that all the loss should be honored and we made

sure there was a military presence at every event it is true that this was partially, if a body was actually present, to make sure it was a hundred percent unreserrectable. We'd repurpose slaughterhouse boltguns to destroy the relevant brain region with minimum splashback. And although all funerals were mass affairs, for both logistics and safety and numbers, most survivors were still prone to be pretty jumpy, Understandably. So having a sniper overseeing the service made it go a little smoother. I signed up at my father's funeral.

There's a ten-minute line, because if you were young and you'd made it through without losing a limb to friendly fire or being burnt in a crash, what else were we going to do? Open a coffee shop? For who? With what coffee? What the public didn't know, didn't need to know,

was that we had good reason for not just hurting the infected into some fur. For starters, given the basic collapse of industry, all our high-tech weaponry is suddenly worth its weight in gold. And so, in the years that followed, our country chose to concentrate what military resources we could muster, ring-fence for obvious reasons, on what we called guided assault units. When we finally revealed what that meant, what we'd managed, which was unprecedented, by the way, The complexity of the interface alone, they were obviously protests from the other side of the water. All these survivors groups suddenly saying, but what about their rights?

This is the infected they're talking about. The rights of the active infected. We couldn't believe it. It felt kind of trippy being online again. I mean, obviously not the same as it was 10 years before, but the fact it was military only didn't matter. People still found stupid stuff to do at the edges so long as you were off duty. I mean, I grew up in the 20s, basically handwriting letters, taking them to the post office,

waiting for replies. So to text with a friend stationed in a foreign country instantly, they even think they'll have commercial video back next year. Maybe. The first time I plugged into the interface, I puked. This is actually pretty common for all kinds of both boring and disgusting reasons. I remember being shocked at how fast they could move. I mean, I was a kid in the outbreak.

I was mostly, I now realize, sheltered. The training area was in the desert, not where we were, the pilots. That was this big converted hangar on base. I mean, where the bodies were. I can't tell you. to be able to run and jump and climb and fall in that sandbox without ever getting tired, without ever feeling any pain. It wasn't, it wasn't, I don't think I'd be allowed to use the word fun exactly, but...

I was so sick the first time. Travel sick, I guess. They weren't sure they should put me in again. And I sort of wish they wouldn't, to be honest. At least until I looked across and saw Mahoney spidering hers up pretty much a sheer rock face. And I thought, what else are you going to do? Join a cult. Worshiping what?

Looking down at their hands, you were lucky if they had the full ten, in rags of their old clothes because no one's getting close enough long enough for a costume change. Even feeling basic feedback from their weird, wiry muscles, lurching round this red-hot landscape in almost electric spasms. Luckily, the tech guys didn't bother with olfactory feedback. It wasn't a decision taken lightly.

That's the first and most important thing to say. And if you look at our record for a full five years before, we had tried to cooperate every step of the way. They were hoarding resources. They were keeping secrets. Our position was that all surviving nations and or city states should be working together, and we were happy to take the lead. We even gave warnings which were not just ignored but rejected.

Our ambassadors insulted. Fine. We had secrets of our own. On my first run, I was part of the team to breach the perimeter. Ten of us, ten feet apart, walking along the riverbed. We were going against the current, but those bodies are so strong. And ten feet above, the light trapped the other side of the surface. We came up out of the water in the corner of the camp filled with portable toilets, actually.

My first kill was... Yeah, it was a civilian, sadly. One of the plant workers, I guess. He was still doing up his trousers. I just stayed professional. Bit out the throat like we'd been shown. It had been 10 years. A lot of the guards were new.

They knew theoretically what to do, lower limb, then headshots. but until you've got bodies swarming around you. Also, because remotely, we had finer motor control and working memories, we could, once they'd raise the alarm, grab their weapons, and use them against them. Surprise! Of course, you try and finish them as quick as you can,

but it's like throwing a ragdoll around. Plus, they're panicking. They won't stay still. I feel bad, but a few times I ripped an arm off or whatever and didn't get a chance to go back. Someone else came running to engage, and we had limited backups back in the ships. There must have been some cleanup to the next morning. The first time I got killed, it was pretty shocking.

Obviously, you don't directly experience any pain, but the life leaving the body, that you feel, even over the link, even from over the sea. It was like a shiver that runs like a wave through your body and back. Only then, just as suddenly, the system reboots me in a second-line body back in the support transport, and I'm running back toward the action. We'd hoped they might retreat to minimize casualties, but the relief when they actually did was incredible. Obviously, they were in shock.

They didn't know what was happening, only that the infected were apparently back and somehow smarter, like they'd evolved, which, in a way, I guess, The end of the mission was kind of surreal. With no enemy fire, there was no need to run, so we're just piling all these crates from the lab down on the beach. The water was black, and the cargo ship had a single red light to aim for. Wandering across the sand toward it under these huge weights of oil drums and gas tanks, straining even their arms, every now and again you'd cross paths.

Another team member swimming, dead-faced, out of the dark. But seeing them move slower. working together to do something useful, something purposeful. I don't know. These bodies clumsy under their burdens struggling through the moonlight. These stupid, broken things given one last chance to help out. It was sort of... Well, whatever the plan was, we took way more than ever expected possible,

filling the hold with machine parts and fuel cells and hard dryers and raw materials until there was no room for the bodies themselves. And so they were left there on the far shore. That felt... That felt... As far as we were concerned, that was that. We had the assets we needed. We'd have preferred not to have been blamed straight away.

But it turns out the camera implanted in the body's heads had some component only we had access to. Again, outrage from a... abroad. We said, okay, well, let's work together so we never have to do this again. Some outrage at home, too. We politely inquired if the community leaders in question would rather we sent their surviving offspring on a borderline suicide mission. For now, at least it did shut the powers abroad up. They didn't have interface technology anything like ours. Most hadn't even considered it. but you could bet they'd already be reverse engineering what was left after the cranial bombs of our fallen detonated.

In fact, some of these supposedly enlightened regimes had quite literally liquidated their infected completely. So how could they talk morality? It wasn't our fault they'd completely thrown away what, with a little ingenuity, turned out to be a resource. Meanwhile, at home, the religious sector was already on our side. We're happy to source scriptures saying, more or less, we were only doing what was right and good. But the hardcore sentimentalists, the ones whose loved ones were missing, presumed infected,

there were a lot of difficult questions. Do you have access to their memories? No. Nor do we want them. Holy fuck, can you imagine? Do you use kids' bodies? No, we said. Not yet, we thought.

I'm still basically certain that what happened that day, to me, started off as a joke by some sick tech fuck. And that's all I have to say about it. When I finish my sentence for destroying government property, then I'll shout about it. I promise you that. to anyone who will listen. To put it into context,

there had already been seven protests and three minor disturbances, and most of the casualties each time were security services. My men and women, every time there was a march. Sure, they all start peaceful, but then one person decides they need to make a point, and nothing makes a point.

like a kitchen knife or a broken bottle. The first five times we absorb it. We let them damage property. We watched them throw stones. But then an officer gets killed. Some girl who grew up and joined up. Not some mindless hollowed out. Let's face it, zombie.

I'll use the word and I don't care whose feelings I hurt. They're not huge. any more. I don't make the rules. But when you kill one of mine, I will enforce them. It was pretty tense the days before. It's weird being the face, you know,

of this unelected government and their, well, obviously unpopular policies. And they didn't really have enough regular soldiers, so us pilots were redeployed from the hangar to the front line. Pretty scary facing your own people, especially when it was your own totally breakable body in the way. People would chant that we were worse than the infected because at least they didn't have a choice.

They begged us to join them and stop this evil. They repeated that a lot. Sometimes you'd see people you knew in the crowd, almost screaming it. It's not as big a town as it used to be, in terms of people living in what's left of it anyway. To get to sleep, we were assigned earplugs to blank out all the crying in the barracks. I think if the main, the big riot had started in the center of town, we could have been a lot more measured. But whoever's idea it was to attack the gated communities? I mean, yes, I get it. That's where the leaders' families were, but what did they think the leaders would do?

As I've said again and again since, no, we hadn't always expected to use the AUs in our own territory. But yes, we did have the foresight to envision what that might look like, if it ever became absolutely necessary. And thought hard about appropriate measures to limit fatalities, which is planning. not plotting. Okay, you know what? You should know what happened to me. Someone needs to. They should pay for what I went through.

So yeah, the riot had been going on a day before we were told we were going there. The regular forces had lost control of the suburbs, and the gated community was basically besieged. So you look down at your arms and you see these almost mittens, day glow yellow, so they stand out all the way up. to the elbow. Our muzzles had been spray-painted the same color, exactly so civilians could see. We couldn't grab, we couldn't bite. But good luck stopping us because we're already dead.

Psychologically, it was smart, I guess. Just seeing us in the distance definitely sent maybe two-thirds of the rioters jogging home pretty much instantly. Plus, we were, you know, under instruction to move slowly, arms up. Remember us? We're back to give you just a little nudge. Unfortunately, the other side of seeing us coming was that some people got so freaked out, they started climbing all over each other. People are hurting each other, and suddenly a few have actually made it over the wall. I saw Pickford's body go running past me, and I knew we were in trouble. Those communities hold a lot of people, and yes, they are privileged, and yes, some of them are related to the people who, okay, might have done things you do not agree with.

But some of them are also the mothers and the uncles and aunties of soldiers who did okay in a previous life. And if you think I'm going to let you burn down their houses because we didn't show your dead the maximum possible respect? No, fuck you, I will not just watch. The safety features were kind of rushed together. I think that became obvious pretty quickly. I'd sort of shepherded a bunch of screaming people away from the wall without too much resistance.

But when a couple needed nudging and they wriggled free to run, again, screaming, it became pretty clear the mittens weren't as secure as they should be. And that worried me because the thing about the link, the thing no one ever talks about, is that, sure, you're in control, running, jumping, grabbing. but the body's also, and it's unpredictable, to be honest. Sometimes when you get close to a living, if we're calling them, um, us, that sometimes you can find the jaw starts snapping whether you like it or not. In the end, we're not in there alone.

I don't know what had happened to this guy. Maybe he'd lost everyone. I can relate, but this guy wouldn't stop. I shunted him away. He wouldn't stop. I swatted him a little, hoping to wind him or stun him or just scare him, really. But he wouldn't stop. He got right up to my face, and he was throwing his whole self against me. So hard, my muzzle was rattling.

I was the first responder over the wall, and at first all I did was patrol the other side. Seeing me in there stopped a few people even trying. But then somebody got me good from behind. Someone with a baseball back that knocked me down to my knees. my muzzle was rattling and this guy kept coming he was trying to wrestle me down i was i wanted i wanted to cry for this guy what he must have been through to become this stupid this in need of justice or symbolism or whatever and it's hard to subdue people peacefully when you're as strong as the infected because bones break so easily anyway in must have been five minutes

of struggling. By now, I'm just hoping he gets tired. He really only manages eventually to pull off my right mitten. And that gave the fucker pause. He doesn't like to look at my three-fingered claw, so he's frozen, but I'm frozen too. I'm looking down at this on. I don't know how many times she hits me, but it's a lot. I guess you think she has to bust my skull, which is more or less correct, although she's taking a risk with a cranial bomb. Anyway, the problem is, you know, the muzzle. The pretty simple, pretty cheap frame of painted metal takes a good portion of her efforts, and as I stand, it falls to the floor. Pickford somehow over the wall, in direct violation of our mission directive. And then on the other side of me, I see Stroheim literally like, running away.

No one chasing him, just some roughed up guy alone and confused. But after covering 100 meters in some ridiculous inhuman speed, Stroheim still isn't stopping. I'm watching him. disappearing, and maybe there's a problem with the cranial bomb is all I can think. But it's not my job to find out. I turned back around to the crowd, which is definitely thinning, and I raise my hands. I come in peace. Get out of my way. I come in peace. Get out of my way. It turns out she was basically a criminal, as in she'd been involved in civil unrest multiple times, covered in homemade tattoos, too. No self-respect. And say what you will about what happened to her,

which I maintained was only partially my fault. When the others saw it, you better believe they climbed the fuck back over the wall. People are streaming past me, screaming like some fucked wildfire. Hickford, or, you know, the body, Pickford's in, is standing there and along with fresh blood dripping off the front of it, head to knee.

This makes the yellow mittens look sort of disingenuous. I think it's fair to say that we maybe didn't consider an appropriate at depth, the confusions that might occur when our own infected, albeit almost entirely neutralized, were deployed in our own community. The first shot goes through my arm, which would make it pretty hard to climb out again. Every time I see a sign of life, I alter my course away from it. The second, my torso.

Worse than useless. I turn back to try and calm them down. That's not a euphemism. My mittens are up. I'm heading for the countryside. Anywhere but here, somewhere I'll be where this body will be safe. My Auntie Helen shuffling toward me

with her pistol firing every step. I want to say, Not the torso, Annie Helen, the head. A message from control. Specialist Stroheim, where the fuck do you think you're going? I'm walking backwards to keep her out of arm's length, but then my backs against the wall, punctuated by a completely irrelevant groin shot.

I don't stop until I'm in a feel. Just a field. There are trees, even a stream. My jaw snaps. And I kneel. I know they can't pull me out of the link and leave an infected body in the wild, especially one with one mitten off. I look down at the uncovered arm, and I swear it's almost like I can feel the heat of the sun on it.

My jaw snaps. The heat of the midday sun on my sister's tattoo. My name, Robert's name, mom and dad's names, wrapped in flowers. If I could kiss it, I would if it wasn't for this fucking muzzle. In the cool grass, in the midday sun. My jaw snaps back as Eddie Helen finally puts a bullet through my eye, thank God. I reboot back in the control room, laughing. And this is before I got the promotion.

Yeah, it must have been funny. To some tech fuck. Hey, this guy's got the same name as his host body. A little joke. It's not like he can see himself. It's only crowd control. Another message. New link incoming. Specialist Rathers requesting override. Refused. Specialist Roheim, this is your final warning. Return to the troop carrier immediately. Your seat controlled to Specialist Rathers.

Mute. My sister's name was Gabriella. She burnt everything she ever cooked. She invented dance moves that no one ever copied. She loved turtles and hated all sports except obscure athletic events, which she mostly found endearingly funny. She was 21 when the outbreak reached her university. And now she's facing the stream, sparkling in the cool grass. I love you, Cap. Under these hot spears of midday sun, when I detonate the cranial bomb. A shiver runs through me like a wave and back. As the lights come back on, our stories come to an end.

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