Chapter 4: The Crawling Fever

Chapter 4: The Crawling Fever

The sight of the ant-worshipped, syrupy form in the bed finally broke Leo’s paralysis. A single, primal thought screamed through the fog of his horror: Hospital. Now.

He fumbled for his phone, his thumb slick with a mixture of his own sweat and the residue from Marc’s forehead. He swiped to the emergency call screen, his finger hovering over the green icon. But what would he say? ‘My friend is sick’ was a pathetic understatement. ‘My friend is covered in a sweet syrup and being tended to by an army of white ants after he ate a strange egg.’ They’d send a psych team, not an ambulance. They’d think he was high, a lunatic. They would be too slow.

No. He had to do it himself.

"Okay, Marc," Leo said, his voice a ragged imitation of calm. "We're getting you out of here. We're going to the ER."

He moved to the bed, his sneakers making a soft, sticky sound on the floorboards. The sweet, fermenting stench was so thick he could taste it at the back of his throat. He grabbed the sweat-soaked sheet, intending to wrap it around Marc, to lift him.

The moment his hands made contact, Marc’s eyes snapped open, locking directly onto his. The vacant, glassy look was gone, replaced by a sharp, feral glare of pure paranoia.

"No," Marc rasped, his voice a low growl that vibrated with an unnatural resonance. "Can't. They don't like the light."

"Who doesn't like the light, Marc? There's no one here. You're sick. You're burning up."

Leo tried to pull his friend into a sitting position, but it was like trying to move a statue. Marc, who was all lanky limbs and wiry strength, felt impossibly heavy, rooted to the bed. Then, with a speed that defied his condition, he shoved Leo back. The push wasn't the weak, feverish swat of a sick man; it was a burst of explosive, animalistic strength that sent Leo stumbling backward, tripping over a pizza box and landing hard on the floor.

"Get away!" Marc snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth. A thin string of clear syrup connected his upper and lower lip before snapping. "You want to take it. You want to take what's mine."

"Take what? Marc, it's me! Leo! I'm trying to help you!"

But he wasn't talking to Leo anymore. His dilated eyes were darting around the room, focusing on shadows in the corners, on the cracks in the ceiling. He was a cornered animal protecting its nest. And with a sickening certainty, Leo realized he was the intruder.

"Hungry," Marc muttered, his gaze turning inward. He clutched his grotesquely swollen stomach with both hands, a gesture that was almost tender. "So… hungry."

Leo pushed himself up, his body aching from the fall. His mind reeled. This wasn't just a fever; it was a complete unraveling of his friend's mind. The thing inside him wasn't just consuming his body; it was rewriting his brain, replacing thoughts of friendship and reason with a primal, paranoid instinct.

He decided to try one more time, changing his tactic from force to pleading. "Marc, please. What do you need? Water? Food? Just tell me what you need, and I'll get it."

Marc’s head lolled to the side, a strange, cunning look in his eyes. He didn't seem to want a burger or a glass of water. His gaze drifted past Leo, towards the floor. "They bring it," he whispered, a faint, blissful smile touching his lips. "They know what I need."

Following his gaze, Leo saw that the single, disciplined line of ants he had first noticed had changed. It wasn't one line anymore. It was three. No, four.

They were highways.

One stream of white insects flowed from the crack in the window. Another emerged from beneath the bedroom door, a silent, flowing river from the hallway. A third trickled down from a water stain on the ceiling, and a fourth was pushing up from a gap in the floorboards near the radiator. They moved with a terrifying, synchronized intelligence, their milky-white bodies forming a network of living veins that all terminated at the same destination: Marc’s bed.

Leo watched, frozen in a new kind of horror, as the ants on the lead highway reached their destination. They weren't just marching. They were carrying things.

The first ant in the column was dragging the iridescent, emerald-green carapace of a dead June bug. The next few were carrying a dusty, brightly-colored piece of what looked like a shattered lollipop, its sticky surface trapping them for a moment before they pulled free. Another group was cooperating, their combined strength moving a desiccated bee, its legs still fuzzy with yellow pollen. They brought a sticky cap from a soda bottle, a single red sequin that shimmered in the dim light, a dead fly, a flake of sugary cereal.

They were offerings. Tiny, pathetic pieces of detritus scavenged from the apartment, from the hallway, from the world outside. Each one was a tribute, a nutrient, a building block for the monstrous project unfolding in the bed.

The ants swarmed onto the sheet, depositing their treasures around Marc's body. A few of the more intrepid ones crawled onto his syrupy skin and right up to his cracked lips. Marc’s tongue, coated in a white film, darted out and lazily licked one of the insects away. He chewed slowly, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy.

"Good," he sighed.

Leo gagged, a violent, full-body heave. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, desperate to put distance between himself and the obscene spectacle. He had to get out. He couldn't help Marc. Marc was gone. The thing wearing his friend's skin was something else entirely, a human hive being nourished by an army of six-legged servants.

He turned and lunged for the bedroom door, his only thought to escape, to run, to breathe air that wasn't saturated with the smell of sweet rot and decay.

He stopped dead in the doorway.

The highway of ants flowing under the door had widened. It was no longer a thin line but a thick, writhing carpet of white that stretched from one side of the frame to the other. Thousands upon thousands of them. To leave, he would have to step on them, to crush them under his feet.

A low growl emanated from the bed behind him.

Leo slowly turned his head. Marc was staring at him, his expression no longer paranoid or confused. It was cold, possessive, and utterly inhuman. It was the look of a queen protecting her colony.

He was trapped. The ants weren't just a symptom of the sickness anymore. They were the guards. And Leo, who had come here as a worried friend, was now just another piece of meat in the nest.