Skin on My Skin by John Burks

turned just in time to duck the first punch as the man I was sure I’d just watched die swung for me.  
    “Daddy’s home,” Big Woody growled. “And horny as all get out.”

    The monster swung at me again and I backed up, nearly tripping over my own feet. My exposed skin began to tingle and I felt the blisters rising and bursting. Coming here was a mistake, I knew, and it would be probably be the last of many I’d made in the day.  
    “What are you doing here, punk? Why are you following me? What the fuck are you doing in my place?”  
    The beast didn’t seem to care that his already horribly mangled skin, skin so torn from the Preacher’s Plague that it was hard to still recognize him as a man, was burning. He’d ignored the multiple bullet wounds and moved like a monster possessed. He looked like an ogre, or a troll from some fantasy movie before it all burned down. But he didn’t react like everyone else. His organs obviously weren’t shutting down and his throat wasn’t closing. He moved with the strength of a bull and a speed that was frightening. This distortion of his tattoos, through the plague scars, painted a swath of mixed up and crazy symbols across his chest. His muscles bulged even beneath his scars and I could see murder in his eyes.
    I stumbled over the piles of crap in the room, falling onto my back. I hit the old wooden floor with a metallic thump, roaches scattering away from around me.
    “Who the fuck are you to come into my home and fuck with my bitch?” the scarred man demanded. “You fucked her, didn’t you? You fucked my girl,” Big Woody screamed. “God damn, I can’t believe you fucked my girl.”
    I was chocking as our pheromones mixed, igniting the Preacher’s Plague in our blood. I couldn’t move and my vision faded. I saw him as a monstrous blur. Despite the pain I couldn’t believe he was still moving. He must have a hell of a tolerance to the Plague.
    “I can’t believe you did me this way, baby,” Big Woody said to Jenna. “After all I’ve done for you…”  
    The man sounded like a morose redneck lover from an old daytime talk show. I couldn’t see what happened to the woman and I only regretted not freeing her earlier. Seals… If I only had the damn seals this might be going better.
    “Where are seals?” I croaked, half delusional.  
    “What fucking seals? There aren’t any fucking seals. What the fuck are you talking about?”
    He staggered a bit, coming towards me, and I could see the plague finally kicking in inside his body. He had a hell of an immunity to it, though, and his strength, even through the internal fires, was amazing. He picked up a case of MREs and hurled them at me. The box slammed into my head and I bordered on passing out.  
    “Hey, fuck head,” the woman, Jenna I seemed to remember her saying her name was just before the man burst into the room, stood somewhere off to my right, free of her chains. “Remember me?”
    “Jenna, baby. Don’t do me this way. You know I love you sweet heart. Why you gotta do this to me?”
    “Don’t baby me,” the woman said. “You worthless, subhuman piece of shit.”
    “But after all I’ve done for you…”  
    I heard the gunshot and then my vision faded to black. Fever raced through my body but I felt so very cold. I was sure I was taking my last few breaths as I staggered off into the void.  
    The last thing I remember thinking was, well shit, dad. I guess you were right.

    I don’t have any idea how long I was out and I was more than a little surprised to wake up at all. I woke up slowly, in a fog, every ounce of my body screaming in pain. My joints were all on fire and my skin felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to it. But I’d survived the close encounter with the other man and that was something, something unexpected if nothing else.  
    “So, reckon you’re going to live or what?” Jenna asked me. “I wasn’t sure there for a bit. You got it pretty bad and it was a