Free Voracious by Wrath James White

hungry.
    “The hunger is normal. Your metabolism is on hyper-drive. Take advantage of it. Eat whatever you like. We have the best chefs on the island here at the clinic. You don’t have to worry about watching what you eat ever again.”
    By the time Brian left the island, he was a hundred pounds lighter. He had to admit, he looked great, but the hunger just seemed to get worse the more weight he lost. He wondered what would happen when there was no more fat left for his body to consume. There was no way someone could continue to burn a hundred thousand calories a day. You would have to eat nonstop to feed such a metabolism. As a chef, he knew the highest-calorie foods. They were some of his favorites. But even if he ate every fried, sugary, buttery food he could think of, dripping in gravy with a creamy dessert to follow, he’d never be able to eat that many calories.
    The restaurant was only five miles away on Third Street. In normal traffic, he would have been there in ten minutes. But rush-hour traffic had slowed to a crawl.
    “Fuck! Come on! Move!”
    The fire in his belly had increased. Brian felt like he could feel his body eating itself, turning fat and muscle into adenosine triphosphate and incinerating it. The pants he was wearing had just been purchased yesterday when he realized his entire wardrobe no longer fit. In fewer than twenty-four hours, he’d gone down two more sizes, and his new pants were now sagging off him. He was wasting away.
    He was almost to the Oltorf exit, just two exits away from Third Street, but he didn’t think he could make it. There was an Indian/Texas fusion restaurant on Oltorf he’d always wanted to try. He jerked the wheel to the right onto the shoulder and headed toward the nearest exit. He never saw the police cruiser racing down the shoulder, never even felt the impact.
    Brian’s neck snapped cleanly when his head smacked the dashboard, and he was simply gone.

 
     
     
    12 
     
     
    Wednesday, 9:37 a.m.
    Officer Angel Velasquez blinked several times, trying to clear the fog from his head. He wiped what he thought was sweat from his eyes and his hand came away red. He was bleeding, a head wound. Blood poured down his face from a gash that looked like his forehead had grown a vagina and it was that time of the month. Instead of fear, he felt anger. “That sonovabitch pulled out right in front of me!”
    He opened the car door and staggered out of his vehicle, almost stepping out into traffic. It wouldn’t have mattered; traffic was at a standstill. The police cruiser was smashed. The bumper was completely crushed, and the hood had folded up like an accordion. The big, black Yukon that had crashed into him didn’t look too bad except for the bumper, which was hanging off, and the huge dent in the hatch. The guy behind the wheel, however, wasn’t moving.
    Angel rolled his eyes. Oh, great. He’s probably going to try to sue me. And because I rear-ended him, he’ll probably win. Fuck my life.
    But as he got closer and noticed the man’s bleeding head tilted at an odd angle, he was pretty sure the guy was dead.
    Damn .
    He flagged down the ambulance that was racing up behind him. It was en route to the same accident Angel had been en route toward before he’d struck the Kamikaze commuter, but Officer Velasquez suspected this was more urgent than some obese housewife faking whiplash for insurance money.
    The ambulance stopped in back of his cruiser, and two EMTs jumped out. One was a huge black guy who looked like he should have been chasing a quarterback across a football field, and the other was a mousy little white woman with brown hair who had all the markings of a meth addict, right down to the rotting teeth and acne scars.
    “The driver looks like he needs help. He don’t look so good. I think he might be dead. His head might have hit the steering wheel or something.”
    “Are you okay? Your head’s bleeding. Why don’t you go back to the ambulance and sit