Free The Becoming - a novella by Allan Leverone Page B

a mechanic eventually—sweet
girlfriend, standoffish twelve year old. His life was so normal, it was a slice
of freaking Americana.
    Then the standoffish
twelve year old turned everything upside down by becoming some kind of juvenile
Christopher Columbus and exploring uncharted territory.
    Fast-forward
seventy-two hours. The steady job was still there—assuming he hadn’t gotten
canned for skipping work today—but the sweet girlfriend and standoffish twelve
year old had morphed into something out of a late-night horror movie.
    The worst part of
the whole shitty situation was that Matt had no idea what he was going to do.
He had relegated himself to his own fucking couch while the thing that
used to be Julie was ensconced in their bedroom doing who the hell knew what. Probably
becoming more zombie-like by the minute.
    Okay, so he would
deal with the situation by sleeping on the couch tonight. But that really
wasn’t dealing with it at all, was it? What about tomorrow and the next day and
the day after that? Would the old Julie and Tim somehow magically return? It
didn’t seem likely. In fact, with every passing hour it seemed more and more
like a pipe dream.
    And if they didn’t
return to their old selves, what then? The situation as it currently stood
could not continue. Matt didn’t really believe he had gotten fired for missing
one day of work, but he certainly couldn’t stay home forever, and that
presented a problem. Hanging around the house watching the two ghouls skulk
around wasn’t accomplishing anything, but as frightened as he was to stay in
the house with them, Matt was even more afraid to leave.
    What if he went
off to work and they went around town infecting others with whatever had
infected them? Matt didn’t want to be responsible for other people becoming
what his girlfriend and her son were becoming, and he also feared how many people
might potentially become infected over an eight hour span.
    He knew he needed
to get both of them to a doctor, get them under an x-ray machine or some other
type of body scanner, find out exactly what had taken up residence inside them.
He no longer doubted what he had seen two nights ago, the fleshy, ropy-looking
thing that had been protruding from Tim’s mouth and had been reeled back inside
his body like some sick fishing line the moment Matt had awoken. He had
questioned the sight at the time because it was just so damned . . . bizarre,
but he no longer questioned it. No sir.
    The infection, or
the parasite, whatever it was, had survived by hiding deep inside the mine for
at least a hundred years, and probably a lot longer, if the stories regarding
the cursed place were true. It had hidden and festered and waited patiently for
an opportunity to be released, then taken advantage of that opportunity when
little Tim had knocked down the damned concrete slab.
    Julie—the real Julie,
not this horrible, shambling, blank-eyed version—wouldn’t have believed any of it
if she had been rational enough to listen to Matt. She had never believed. But he
didn’t care. She wasn’t from around here. Harrisburg was only fifty miles from
Tonopah, but it may as well have been fifty thousand. Julie hadn’t grown up
hearing the tales of disappearing miners and strange incidents occurring with
regularity in those tunnels under the earth’s surface.
    Matt believed the
stories, though. He believed every last one. The evidence was right here inside
his own house. And he could prove something horrifying was happening,
too, if only he could get Julie and Tim to the hospital. But he also knew they
would never allow that to happen. At least not willingly.
    He reached under
the couch and gripped his gun like an infant clutching a teddy bear, reassured
by its solidity and deadly potential. He had come to a decision, and felt
marginally better for it. Tomorrow he would take one more day off from work. He
would drive his girlfriend and her son to the hospital, by force if necessary.
    At