Free The Calm Before The Swarm by Michael McBride

square and placed the first
sugar cube right in the middle, carefully lowering her breast back
down to hold it in place. He did the same thing on the right,
wiping his bloody fingertips across her stomach. Using both hands,
he felt along the lower border of her ribs on her right, pushing
firmly beneath until he isolated her liver. Marking the spot with
his left hand, he carved another square where his middle finger had
been and placed the remaining cube in the center.
    He positioned his hands precisely between the
three points and closed his eyes. His lips moved over soundless
words, spoken in his mind where only he could hear them. After an
eternal moment...he opened his eyes. The white cubes began to slowly
darken from the bottom up, filling with a greenish-brown fluid that
amplified the horrendous stench in the room.
    "What do you do with it...you know, when you
get it all out?" Proctor asked.
    "Your wife will be well. What more do you
need to know?"
    "I mean...do you just throw it away?"
    Anders allowed himself a meek smile. "If only
it were that easy."
    The cubes were now so full that fluid began
to puddle atop them.
    He took a deep breath and blew it all the way
out, taking his time doing so. Closing his eyes again, he pried the
first cube from under her breast and threw it into his mouth. He
gagged and retched, heaving, but swallowed it down. He tried to
focus his mind on something else---anything else---but there was no
chance of ignoring the awful taste of the sugar as it slid down
into his stomach. He grabbed the second and tossed it back, already
palming the third as he tried to swallow. It felt like everything
in his stomach was already rising in revolt.
    "Not yet," he whispered, shoveling the third
into his mouth and swallowing as forcefully as he could.
    The scar tissue had already filled in the
squares on the woman's skin, leaving tender pink bubbles that would
stay with Margaret through the remainder of a life that had just
become much longer.
    Anders leapt to his feet, knocking the coffee
table onto its side. He swayed there momentarily to regain his
equilibrium and slapped his hand over his mouth. He bent back over
and snatched his case and scalpel and jammed them into his
pocket.
    His cheeks bulged outward with the force of
the fluids exploding from his guts.
    "Thank you," Proctor said, trying to take
Anders's right hand to shake it, but the younger man just lowered
his shoulder and plowed right through him, sending him careening to
the floor.
    Anders staggered through the darkness,
finally finding the door to the hallway and yanking it open. He was
barely a couple of steps into the hallway when he sprayed a flume
of vomit through his fanned fingers, shaking it to fling the
remainder onto the dirty carpet. It felt as though his insides were
being liquefied, the acids in his stomach churning ferociously. He
needed to get the disease back out before it started to take
root.
    A "Closed for Repairs" sign hung on the
elevator, but it wasn't fooling anyone. It was the same all across
town. With the escalating cost of electricity, elevators were a
luxury only the elite could afford.
    Shouldering through the door next to it, he
stumbled down the stairs with the smell of urine all around him. He
held tightly to the railing as his weak knees repeatedly gave out,
forcing him to catch himself before tumbling down to the next
landing. Time lost all meaning in the grip of such phenomenal pain.
He wasn't sure how many floors he had passed or how many he had
left until he reached the bottom and there were no more stairs to
descend. He thrust his hip against the release bar and nearly
knocked the rust-spotted metal door off its hinges.
    "Oh God," he moaned, collapsing to all fours
in the snow on the sidewalk and heaving a steamy mess of bile onto
the accumulation. Grabbing a handful of snow, he shoved it in his
mouth to try to chase the taste of feces from his tongue.
    A streetlamp towered over him, beside it an
overflowing