CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

She stepped back, her gaze seeking out the camera. Merryl clutched his stomach. Eggs lay in his lap. Some rolled on the ground. As Perry stepped out of the room, the camera caught it—an egg, protruding half-way out of Merryl’s mouth.

He was vomiting them up.

I pressed hard on all the cameras, clicking through them until I reached the hall, and then Perry’s office. She had the radio in hand by this point, and I could only assume this was when she had called me for help.

And I never showed.

Where was she now? Where was Merryl? Both were now possibly beyond my help, though, and there was the matter of the eggs sprawled in Lab A—and that monstrous thing in Barn 21.

I had to get a tool or makeshift weapon to fight with, and the only thing I knew could help me was on the opposite side of this building, in the maintenance closet.

I took a few breaths, catching a faint scent of feathers and blood and fried chicken, and I stepped into the hall.

The fluorescent lights flickered again, making me wish I hadn’t been a bureaucratic butt and approved Perry’s request for LEDs. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been nearing a seizure.

The hallway was empty, and pristine, save for the filthy tracks I’d made. Slow, deliberate breaths followed cautious steps until I reached the room. I peered in through the small, rectangular window above the doorknob. There was no sign of Perry or Merryl, just mess and eggs.

Behind me, a door slammed shut, in the direction of Perry’s office. I ran toward it, calling out, “Perry? You okay?”

I jerked at the knob and squinted to see into her office. She stood by the security monitors, one hand gripping the intercom microphone, and the other carrying… an object I couldn’t make out in the minimal light.

The intercom squealed and echoed around me. “LC. I need you to follow my instructions very carefully and go immediately to Lab B. You have five seconds. I can’t keep him distracted for long. Run.”

Lab B was across from her office. I turned and ran in, slamming the door behind me.

The motion lights kicked on, and before me, on a table next to Perry’s expensive microscope, was a petri dish and a needle. A timer clicked on the countertop to my left, and the blue flame of a Bunsen burner licked the bottom of a metal pan.

The intercom buzzed. “Step away from the door. I’m coming in.”

No sooner had I moved out of the way, Perry barged in, a cone-shaped nozzle in one hand, and the other hand wrapped around the device’s control knob. I followed the familiarly-shaped cone to the tubing to the backpack she wore.

It was the Kerosene Flame Canister—a flamethrower she invented to help us perform prescribed burning, and on the odd occasion of major, widespread illness, an effective way to bonfire a pile of carcasses. She went with kerosene to spite my gasoline-budget cutting.

I stepped toward her, and her fingers tightened around the flamethrower’s trigger guard. “I need you to follow instructions and quickly,” she said. “Step over to the table, poke your finger with that needle like you’re checking your blood sugar, squeeze out some blood, put it on the petri, and then step into the corner opposite me. Any sudden moves, and I’m turning you into ash quicker than Lot’s wife turned into salt. Understood?”

I held my hands out, trying to show I wasn’t a threat. “Okay. But I have to tell you, there’s a thing in Barn 21. It ate Bodie.”

She nodded. “I saw.”

Of course she did. She had run toward her office once Merryl started vomiting eggs.

I picked up the needle. “Any alcohol wipes?”

She tilted her head, and then, without taking her eyes off me, released the doorknob and used her free hand to rummage in the nearest drawer. She tossed two white packets to me. I missed catching them, and they landed on the table. They were labeled, “Moist Towelettes, Courtesy of King Chicken Ranch. Fried chicken so good, you’ll lick your fingers to the bone!”

“Close enough,” I muttered, as I tore one open and wiped down my index finger. As I picked up the needle in my free hand, an overwhelming scent of grease flooded into my nostrils. I sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

She nodded again. “Vegetable oil. I didn’t have peanut. Hurry it up.”

The needle bit in, and I clenched my teeth as I squeezed five drops of blood onto the petri dish.

“Excellent,” Perry said. “Go to the corner.”

I complied, and as soon as I was in position, she dropped the flamethrower’s nozzle to her side and moved like lightning, grabbing the handle of the metal pan of grease from the Bunsen burner, carrying it over to the table, and setting it next to the petri dish. Opening a drawer at her waist, she pulled out a spoon and dipped it into the hot liquid.

“Hey,” I said. “What is going on? What are you doing?”

The liquid sizzled as she poured it onto my pitiable sample of blood. “I’m testing for infection.”

She stirred it around, and then dribbled a couple of drops onto a set of slides next to her microscope. She prepped it in a flash, and glanced back and forth from the eyepiece to me. After a minute, she sighed and her formerly stiff body drooped. “You’re clear.”

I stepped forward. “I could’ve told you that.”

She slid the K.F.C.’s straps off her shoulders and eased it to the ground.

“Merryl?”

She shook her head. “He’s alive, but… it’s not him. He’s turning into something else. I have him barricaded in the break room but not for long.”

I pointed to the table. “What was all this about?”

“Trial and error,” she said. “I figured it out while trying to test Merryl’s blood. On sight, the cells look normal, but then, when I introduce a hot liquid, they react.”

I neared her. “React?”

She pushed her glasses back onto the