Devoured by - (ebook reader browser .txt) 📖

For now.

“What I want to know is how long you guys have been doing the horizontal mambo?”

Liz held her face in her hands.

A smile cracked Don’s face. “Eighteen months.”

The words hit Lance like a blow to the stomach. He wanted to cry, vomit, and rage all at the same time. His jaw muscles worked as he stared at a cigarette butt on the street, his emotions threatening to boil over.

Eighteen fucking months.

“I guess our little run in yesterday wasn’t accidental either.”

“Nope.”

“Did you send him to intercept me after my job interview?” Lance asked, turning, his eyes boring into Liz. “Figure you could find out if I was going to sign the papers this week?”

In a fit of anger a few days prior, Lance had threatened not to sign their divorce paperwork. She came home in a foul mood that afternoon, angry about something that had nothing to do with Lance. She’d started on him before the front door even closed behind her.

The ammunition she used on him that day consisted of her number one talking point—his inability to give her children.

That frustration, in and of itself, gnawed at Lance’s ego more than anything. Liz had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, something that he agreed she would be great at. She loved children and envied all of her friends who’d entered motherhood over the years.

They’d tried for two years before he finally relented and had himself tested. A gnawing suspicion had worked at him for a while before he went to the clinic that day. The results were what he feared—he was infertile. Something about knowing that he couldn’t fulfill one of his primary duties as a husband crushed Lance on a level he didn’t even understand.

More than the lost jobs and income, their childless home drove the irreparable chasm between them. The one thing she desired above all others was the only thing he could never provide her.

The heat really turned on when she approached the age of thirty. Her biological clock ticked louder than ever, and Lance didn’t have the tools to keep it quiet.

To say that he felt like less of a man because of it would be an understatement of ludicrous proportions. Whenever Liz wanted to put him down, all she had to do was bring that up.

Last week, when she mentioned the fact that she was a thirty-five-year-old woman without any children, Lance threatened to lengthen her misery. If he didn’t grant her the divorce right away, she couldn’t be rid of him as quickly as she wanted.

It was a petty, stupid, and hollow threat. He wanted out of the marriage as much she did, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

“Lance, I’m sorry,” Liz said. She let her hands fall to her side, exposing her leaking eyes. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

“Oh really? What did you figure the best way to tell me was? Maybe let it go on for another year or so and then pretend that it was something new?”

Liz shook her head but didn’t reply.

Don maintained his smile. “How long have you known?”

“It was pretty fucking obvious when I came out of the hospital and found you guys holding hands.”

“Oops.” His grin grew even larger.

Lance’s hands clenched as they rested in his lap. “I wondered why you kept asking about Liz when I ran into you on the sidewalk, and how she remembered your name after all of those years. If everything else wasn’t going on, I would have figured it out faster. To be honest, Liz, I expected you to have a boyfriend at some point, but eighteen months ago? Why wait a half a year after that to finally file for divorce?”

Liz started to respond when Don put a hand on her shoulder.

“What does it matter, buddy? It’s over. Let’s all move on.” He kept on smiling, obviously enjoying the despair he saw in Lance.

“You need to shut the fuck up, Don.”

A group of men down the street threw a garbage can through the window of a department store. They hooted and hollered as they climbed inside, looting the place.

“Listen, buddy—”

“I’m not your goddamn buddy, Don.”

“Whatever. Lance, we’re going to the stadium now. I’d prefer it if you waited around for a little while before following. This is awkward enough without having to hear you bitch the entire way there.” Don threw his arm around Liz’s shoulders and stuck his chin out.

Liz inspected the ground, quiet.

“I’m trying to talk to my wife, so keep your mouth shut.” Lance’s tenuous grasp on his emotions slipped with every utterance that came from Don’s mouth. “Why the deception? Why the wait? Why continue to tear me down and make me feel worthless when you had someone else on the side for so long? And you, Don. How pathetic is it that you would pretend to give a shit about me getting hit by the car?”

He climbed off the curb and stepped toward them, not knowing what he would do next.

Don met him halfway, pushing him in the chest. “One more step and I’ll drop you.”

Lance didn’t expect the push and he stumbled sideways, his shoulder smashing against the brick exterior of the parking garage. He pushed away from the wall and lunged at Don, his fury exploding as he thought of all the embarrassment and emasculation he’d suffered over the past eighteen months.

He lobbed a sloppy punch that missed by a foot, throwing him off balance.

Don sidestepped the blow with ease and connected with a short left hook that skewed Lance’s equilibrium.

“Three years of boxing, buddy.”

Lance tried to focus on the bigger man, but his vision wouldn’t focus quite right. His ass bumped into a garbage can, allowing him to regain a modicum of stability. He squared his shoulders and widened his feet when a bolt of white-hot agony shot up his left leg.

His foot cramped, the arch squeezing in on itself as he lifted it to see what happened. A piece of dark glass, similar to that of a beer bottle, stuck out of the bottom of his foot, blood already welling around the puncture.

“Shit!” Lance steadied himself on the garbage can and pinched the shard with his fingers, holding in a squeal as it moved in the incision. He pulled it out with a hiss, staring at it in anger, before throwing it into the trash can.

Don smirked, a small laugh escaping him.

Lance’s blood boiled at the mockery and he reared back to throw another punch when Don caught him with a right hook that sent him to the sidewalk.

Pain bloomed in his temple. A warm, sticky line ran down his cheek. He watched Don through bleary eyes and muttered, “Eighteen months.”

“Deal with it, buddy.” Don grabbed Liz’s hand and pulled her away, leading them down the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry, Lance,” Liz said as she looked back over her shoulder.

How she had expected everything to play out still eluded Lance. There was no way that he would ever take this kind of news well. While it was true that he wanted out of the marriage as much as she did, the idea of her cheating on him before the divorce process even started made him queasy.

His head and foot throbbed as he pushed himself to a seated position. He sat on the curb again, watching as people looted and destroyed the street. Their anger mirrored his own as they lashed out at anything in their path. He wondered if the other infected cities collapsed as quickly as Pittsburgh.

Blood continued to seep from his foot, the pool under his heel growing as he watched. He wiped at the line running down his cheek.

A shriek came from an open window in the hospital to his right.

“Shit,” he muttered as he got to his feet, favoring his wounded left foot. “Can’t believe I’m down here getting in a fistfight while there are crazy mutants running around.”

There was no chance he could walk the several miles to the stadium on his wounded foot without shoes or clothing. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to go there, at this point. She would be there, and the thought of running into them again didn’t sit well.

His apartment was only a few blocks to the north—he could make it in an hour or two if he didn’t run into any snags along the way. Food, clothing, and water waited for him there.

He could sleep in his own bed and try to ride this thing out. Or he could at least die in his own home. That sounded better than most of his other options.

Two men fought over a television on the sidewalk in front of a bar. Part of the wall mount clung to the back of the TV as they tried to wrestle it from one another. They threw blows at each other moments later.

Lance ignored them as he tested how much pressure he could put on his foot. The pain was bad, but bearable. His concern over contracting some kind of disease from walking on the bare, filthy streets of Pittsburgh outweighed any discomfort he had to endure.

A window on the side of the hospital shattered, the glass raining onto the sidewalk below. The body of a woman followed, landing on the glass and concrete with a hollow thud like a smashed watermelon.

The random fights in the crowd abated as everyone stared at the mangled corpse. Their eyes surveyed the side of the building until they found the window the woman came from.