Eat'em Read Online Free

to take a human life. Never decided to take a human life. Never. I’ve only ever wanted to protect human life.”
    “From what?” Mike asks.
    “From the infection.”

 
    Chapter 4
    The palpability of the Texas sun covered my skin like burning oil. Nothing prepared me for the dramatic change in climate when we arrived to the state by train two months prior. Even still, my body refused to adjust to the summer heat.
    I sat in the back of Val’s ’04 mint-green Mustang to make room for our neighbor, a short guy named Isaac. Overdressed, Isaac climbed into the car, parting a suit jacket as he sank into the front seat. He always wore a vest and scarves, even in the hundred-degree heat. His dark hair swooped to the side with a cavernous part about an inch over his right ear. He was considerably older than my uncle and myself and seemed even worldlier than someone his age typically does. I suspected this was his second shot at college life. Either that or he’d taken a few years off after high school.
    “I loathe this one, Jacob,” Eat’em plugged his nose and pointed to Isaac with his tail. He crossed over the dash, hopped onto the center console, and leapt onto my lap in the back seat. He climbed my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “He smells funny, yes! Not the good kind of funny… but the bad kind. Like the kind of funny that makes you want to burn down a village to get rid of the stink.” In reality, he smelled like mothballs.
    I tapped Isaac on the shoulder and asked, “What kind of cologne you wearing?”
    Isaac smiled. He had an awkward grin that bared his bottom teeth as much as the top, like a young child faking it for a family photo – warmer though, and more genuine. “I don’t wear any… maybe you smell the starch. Does it bother you?”
    “Not at all,” I said at the same time Eat’em arched backward, holding onto my collar, and yelled ‘YES!’ I returned Isaac’s sheepish grin. “I like it. I was just trying to place the scent.”
    “No! No! No!” Eat’em ranted. “You have to extinguish this fool from existence. Drown him in a bathtub, yes! Use lots of soap. In fact, if you care anything about the prolonged survival of your species you would get out of this car, stop by the gas station, grab fifteen gallons of bleach and a ten pound bag of Gummy Worms, soak this putrid moron in the bleach and give me the Gummy Worms, yes… and a slush!”
    Val gave me the eye from the rearview mirror. Clearly, he agreed with Eat’em.
    “Mind if I smoke in your car?” A cigarette stuck out the corner of Isaac’s mouth even before Val could answer. A few years would pass before smokers became almost entirely segregated to pits across the United States. At the time, the smoking section was anywhere your foot touched outside, unlike the designated areas that came into existence soon after, freckling the Earth in carbon monoxide clouds.
    He offered the pack back to me, and I almost accepted, but declined when Eat’em said, “Blech! See, he’s evil, yes! He wants you to smell like death, too.”
    Though Val and I share the same birth year, our academic achievements didn’t quite compare. Having a demon willing to cheat on my behalf in return for some cheap culinary treats (as he sometimes called the junk food in the checkout line) gave me a unique advantage over other students. I was accepted into every college I applied to. Val had a lesser selection to choose from after high school. We compromised on UTA, a satellite of the University of Texas. Val would have to work full time for a year to earn enough money to enroll. I would be on scholarship. He wanted out of Virginia as badly as I did and so we landed in Texas.
    We stopped in the front of a full lot. Val lowered his window as Isaac and I climbed out of the Mustang, followed by Eat’em, who crawled up my leg and found a perch on my backpack.
    “You know where you’re going, Jake-Nasty?” Val asked for the fiftieth time in the last couple