The Becoming - a novella by Allan Leverone

gunpoint if it
came to that.
    At the hospital he
would demand the doctors on duty take x-rays of both of them, again at gunpoint
if necessary. The authorities would be called—of course they would, a lunatic
waving a gun around a hospital would be all over CNN within fifteen minutes of
their arrival—but that was okay, because if the X-rays revealed what he knew they would, Matt guessed every cop within a thirty mile radius of this tiny
little dying hick town would be needed, and even that much firepower might not
turn out to be enough.
    His old life as he
had known it would disappear, but what difference did that make? It was already
long gone, anyway. Matt was going to do whatever it took to try and get his
little family back, and although he knew tomorrow would likely be one of the
worst days of his life—hell, maybe it would even be the last day of his life—he
was glad to have at least decided on a plan of action.
    Before he knew
what was happening, Matt had slid into a troubled slumber.
    ***
    It was on him.
    Something was on
his face.
    Matt’s eyes opened
and by the light of the TV screen flickering in the corner of the living room
he could see Julie and Tim standing next to the couch, side by side, still as gargoyles,
white as the ghosts they had become, their eyes dead and empty.
    But that wasn’t
the worst of it. Those awful things he had seen two nights ago protruded from the
mouths of his two family members, tenebrous and ropy and somehow alien. The
segmented bodies pulsed and squirmed, they looked like gigantic earthworms,
only they were much too big to be earthworms, and oh God they were coming out
of Julie’s and Tim’s mouths, and they had clamped onto Matt’s face, one
on each side of his head, holding it steady while they pushed and pulled at his
lips, trying to force his mouth open so they could infect him, too.
    Matt worked his
jaws, clamping his mouth shut, choking off the scream that tried to explode out
of him of its own accord. His panicked mind raced, threatening to shut down,
but from somewhere came the thought, the knowledge, the certainty, that if he
screamed he was dead, it was that simple.
    So he forced his
mouth shut and fought for his life, clawing at the disgusting mottled earthworm-things
as they squirmed and pushed and pulled, working relentlessly to gain access to
a new host. Instead of withdrawing as they had done two nights ago when he
awoke and saw them, the things must have been emboldened by their success with
Julie and Tim, because they clamped down harder on Matt’s face. They wriggled
and squirmed, squeezing until he thought his cheekbones would shatter.
    Matt kicked and
clawed, fighting desperately but getting nowhere against the unrelenting brute
force of the worm-like creatures. He was tiring rapidly, sickened by the slimy
chunks of parasite skin collecting under his fingernails. At least there’ll
be evidence for the cops to find, he thought to himself, and that was when
he remembered the gun.
    It was under the
couch.
    Inches away.
    Waiting to be
used.
    And Matt knew it
was his only chance.
    Almost beyond
rational thought, his head filled with the screams of terror his mouth could
not open to unleash, Matt released his left hand from the creature stabbing out
of Julie’s open mouth. It immediately redoubled its efforts to wedge its way inside
Matt.
    He grabbed for the
gun in a panic and slapped it away instead. It skittered a couple of inches
farther under the couch on the thick living room rug and stopped. Matt moaned
in terror and as he reached for the Glock one more time, one last time, the
parasite protruding from Tim seemed to get a flash of inspiration. It wriggled
over Matt’s nose, bunching its horrible body up and sliding right over his
nostrils, cutting off his air supply.
    Matt pushed against
the armrest with his feet, leaning off the couch, extending his hand and feeling
for the gun as his grip on the monster began to weaken. He had been panting
from