Parasite Read Online Free

could. It was an impossible task, as he quickly realized that the Chevy’s windows must have blown inward, and all of the tiny cubes of shatterproof glass had collected on his person as if he were some sort of magnet for superheated sand.
    So Walter gave up and went back to searching the road for the cop car or the Chevy… his Chevy, the one with his drugs on the passenger seat.
    His eyes widened when he saw three crackers begin to make their way toward him, their fluid movements somehow erotic, enticing. Six legs, all of them moving and bending in such coordination over the road littered with burning debris. It appeared as if they were floating.
    “Out of the way!” he roared, shooing them with his left hand as he crawled in their direction.
    The crackers paid him no mind and continued past, all still heading in the same direction like a school of chitinous fish.
    Another explosion ripped through the air, and Walter turned his gaze toward the east. A giant fireball licked the skyline, bathing the tops of the trees in a dirty orange glow.
    What the fuck is going on?
    But the thought was fleeting—only one thing mattered to Walter now.
    He squinted as he scanned the asphalt, and his eyes eventually fell on something familiar. A smile graced his thin face.
    His black pouch was lying on the road between the white hash marks roughly ten feet from him.
    Walter crawled forward again, ignoring the fact that it seemed every muscle in his body was crying out for him to stop, to just lie there and wait for help. It occurred to him that he couldn’t see his car anywhere, that he must have been thrown from the vehicle with the explosion, but his goals and motivations, as they had so many times in his life, became singular. And creeping forward literally one inch at a time, the fact that his left leg was nearly numb and his jeans were sticking to his skin from his thigh down to his ankle barely registered.
    He had nearly made it to his black case when he saw the first cracker die. It wasn’t something he would have noticed—truthfully, when he got like this, even the most basic of needs, be it eating, sleeping, or shitting, went ignored—but this happened but a few inches from his face and would have been impossible not to see.
    At first, the cracker’s movements seemed to slow, the rhythmic bursts of air exiting the top of the shell becoming hastened, irregular. Then with the next few steps, the many joints of the frontmost leg refused to lock and then became limp, and the other five legs resorted to dragging it along like a numb, arthritic finger. When another leg stopped working, and then another, its forward progress was significantly inhibited. It was only when the fourth leg was paralyzed that it fell to the asphalt. One of its legs, one of two that still seemed to be clicking and clacking, tried to drive itself into the road and force the shell up again, but it failed. After a few more desperate, grasping attempts, it too fell limp. The final leg soon followed suit.
    Dead; the air stopped pulsing through its white shell.
    It was finally dead.
    And Walter couldn’t have cared less. He crawled another foot forward, and watched—only because it was still in front of him—as the thing began to turn translucent. A moment later, the legs curled upward, articulating those many joints not in the smooth, fluid movements as it had made its way over the uneven terrain, but like jerky drying in the sun. And there they remained, all six of the roughly eight-inch protuberances pointed into the air until the cracker resembled something of the exoskeleton of an overturned crab.
    Turning his head to the side, Walter spat again. And then he reached out with his left hand, trying to grasp the case without having to pull his body forward another inch. Like the dead cracker before him, his left leg had become nearly completely useless, and dragging it was becoming more and more difficult. He wheezed as he stretched out, grunting as the