Wormwood Dawn (Episode VI) by Edward Crae Page B

away most of its skin. Carefully, he placed his knife against its forehead, rocking it with hard downward pressure as if he were splitting a coconut. The skull was surprisingly easy to cut, and he had no trouble penetrating it.
    When he was satisfied with his cut, he set his knife aside. He then placed his fingers into the split, and gently pulled. The skull came apart with some cracking and slurping noises, followed by the rank stench of mildew and other foul things.
    “Jesus Christ,” Cliff said.
    Travis could hear Eric make a gagging noise. Lena was silent.
    “Now,” Travis said. “Let’s take a look at this brain.”
    He pulled as hard as he could, laying the entire head open into two halves. Through the smell, and the tiny wisps of spores, Travis could see the brain. It was gelatinous, partially liquefied, and black. He stared at it for a moment, trying to figure out what could cause such a thing. He thought back to his medical training in the early days, when he had performed dissections of cadavers that had died of mysterious circumstances.
    The only thing he could compare the brain’s condition to was the decay caused by major fungal infections; mostly due to black mold. It was very similar here.
    “Look at how the tissue has been partially dissolved,” he said, poking the brain with his knife. “It still maintains its shape, for the most part, but the frontal and temporal lobes are nothing but putrefied shells.”
    He jabbed his knife into the black material, swirling it around, letting it fall away like gelatin. When he had scraped away everything that he could, all that was left was a small section of organ attached the spinal cord, with a jumble of nerves that connected it to a slightly larger organ.
    “Medulla Oblongata,” he said. “Brain stem, amygdala, cerebellum. These are the most primitive areas; the ones that control motor skills, involuntary processes, and the rest of it controls basic instincts.”
    “Like what?” Cliff asked.
    “Hunger, fight or flight, aggression.”
    He lifted up the floppy section with his knife. “It’s this part that worries me,” he said. “It’s much larger than usual, and has something unknown attached to it. And that, itself, has a cord that wraps itself around the medulla oblongata and proceeds into the spinal column.”
    “What is it?” Lena asked. Eric vomited nearby.
    “Well,” Travis said, watching Eric spew the contents of his stomach. “I’m not sure, man. The only thing I tell is that the areas of the brain that control our speech, thinking, and reasoning are gone. All that’s left is the primitive part necessary for this thing to walk, see, hear, and do a minimum of thinking. If you look here, there is a very small portion of entorhinal cortex left. That tells me that maybe there is a small amount of memory left. But it would be just enough for it to recognize material things.”
    “Like what?” Lena asked, seemingly fascinated. Eric vomited again.
    “Something like ‘hey, that’s a tree. Walk around it,’ or whatever. This is fascinating, man. Heavy shit.”
    “So,” Cliff said. “It’s basically a Democrat.”
    Travis chuckled, shaking his head.
    “Cut open its abdomen,” Cliff said. “Dan and Drew said these things are where the floaters come from.”
    “Floaters?” Travis asked.
    “The green things.”
    Travis nodded. He remembered now. There was one in the woods nearby when they had first arrived. It was going uphill toward the church that Eric and Dan had found a few days earlier. Maybe that was what had caused the people there to turn. He got up and crouched next to the creature’s abdomen, pulling its ‘Have a Nice Day’ T-shirt up.
    With a careful hand, he cut open the soft flesh. Once again, the smell of rot, mildew, and shit spewed out like a cloud of poisonous shit. Eric vomited again.
    “Good lord,” Lena said, standing and backing away.
    Travis pulled the abdomen apart, clenching his teeth as the gloppy