S24 Ep12: NoSleep Podcast S24E12

Your morning shower a tranquil river bank or the endless ocean.

“It's time to dive deep into the abyss from the dark waters of the Cape Fear River.”

Emers yourself in horror as you brace yourself for the no sleep podcast. I can come out. I can come out and host the show. I don't have time to get. I think we do it naturally.

“It is lovely to see all of you my name is Kyle Akers.”

I'm very proud to be the second longest ten year boy actor here and I'm still going to figure out a way to get James Cleveland out of here and become the number one.

The first story was all the way back in season 2 episode 12. Back then if you've been a listener for that long and you've never seen behind the curtain is actually really fun.

We used to pick our own stories and submit them to David and say, "Hey, is this one okay to read?" So I had been a fan I had been listening since the beginning and I reached out one day and just said, "Hey, do you need more voice actors?" I was a musician at the time so I had all of the gear at home and I had been doing some local underwriting for radio stations around Kansas City where I'm from.

“I reached out to David up at the blue and said, "I am a big fan if you have any room for more actors. I would love to read something." He said, "Give it a shot." I picked a story and he said, "Go for it and I send it in."”

David said back, "Is that what you call acting?" Then after like three lines, he said, "I'm just joking. That was fantastic. We'd love to have it." And I have been a part of it ever since and it has been such an amazing through line for me since all the way back in season 2. All the way now to season 24. I've been on this podcast for 23 seasons which to me is unfathomable that I have been lucky enough to be alongside all of these amazing actors and writers and all of the wonderful contributors in every single way to the nosy podcast.

When I am not voice acting, I am in school to be a certified registered nurse anesthetist. So that is a three-year program and I'll end up with a doctor at afterwards and I'll be practicing nurse anesthesia. Which depending on where I am, either I'll be your full-blown anesthesia guy doing all of the anesthesia from when you go to sleep to when you wake up back home.

Other places, there's a whole team doing it, so we'll see where I end up but I am about to finish up my first year so I will graduate in 2028 and then become a full-time CRNA.

I'm very excited for that. My favorite memory that I've had with no sleep. I was honored to be asked to perform with the nosy podcast at the Stanley which was if you don't know the hotel that inspired the shine.

It was so much fun. We had big long weekends the whole time I got to share meals with everybody. We got to go on ghost tours together. It has been an absolute joy to have been a part of those and to be a part of everything that I've been able to be a part of up to this point. So to everyone listening, I've met some of you at events like that. I've been able to chat and discord with you and online with you. It is an honor to be a part of this podcast. I am so thankful for all of you for everything that you do to send us love and support.

And I know that we have just recently rolled out some new merchandise so if you haven't got a chance to go check that out.

Definitely check the link in the show notes to see all of our new designs. They look amazing. We've got a lot more designs coming soon.

And thank you so much for having me be the host of this episode. Okay, okay, we'll get into character. Um, um, putting on my no sleep voice, putting on my no sleep voice. Alright, here we are. While that wonderful merch won't cost you an arm or a leg in today's stories, something just mine.

“Our bodies, are they our vessels or are they our prisons?”

What does it mean to live in flesh that fails and inside of a body that betrays us? Brace yourself as we find out together this week with stories that explore the horror of the body. So let us take each other's hands if feels still have one and jump feet first into the horror of our sleepless tales. I'm Teresa and my experience and all entrepreneurs started a choppy fight.

I've been a choppy fight since the first day, and the fight has to do with no problem. I have a lot of problems, but the fight is not a step ahead.

I have the feeling that choppy fight is a fight from the continent, everything is super integrated and balanced, and the time and the money that I can't have at the end of the game can be invested in everything. Now it's time for the choppy fight.de. We're all growing older, and sometimes facing that isn't the easiest.

“In our first tale brought to us by author Christine Legeski, our narrator asks, "How do we stay relevant?”

How do we live life to the fullest, holding onto our routines while the world changes around us?" Performing this story are Nicole Doolin, Atticus Jackson, Sarah Thomas, and "Oh, and me."

Let's listen and find out if we are all just doomed to grow old and suffer the indignities.

I was cutting down the personal carol, my heart full of raw meat and kale, towards the checkout when I felt that strange prickling in my gut. Shit, this shouldn't be happening, not so soon. hobbled by missing toes and limping, I sped up to get away from the shoppers blocking my path. Wet were seeping through my sweater from my navel to my groin. I buttoned my black coat and hunched over the handle of the shopping cart.

If that bought me a little time, the blooming odor did not.

“Heads jerked up, twisted this way in that, searching for the source.”

The package of adult diapers sailed through the air and landed on top of the meat. They go boomer. The lumpy stock boy had been shelving goods for the week of bladder. The young man working with him at least had the decency to be offended on my behalf. Jesus Dan, shut up. What's wrong with you?

It was no use trying to be invisible now. I stared at that big moon face, memorizing the details. I felt nicked attaining membranes slide over my irises. I blinked them back, but not before Dan glimpsed the pewter sheen on my irises. His face drained of color, and with equally pallid bravado he sneered at me. "What are you looking at, grandma?"

"I'm studying you, so I'll remember." Then I hurried around the corner. I stuffed a few trays of raw beef under my jacket, abandoned my cart and rushed to my car. No one stopped me. I am not incontinent. Aging is filled with indignities just the same.

This humiliation was so cruel it was breathtaking. I fought back tears as I unlocked my car. I would have to find a new supermarket. This one was 20 miles from my house. I didn't want my neighbors seeing how I shot.

How much farther would I need to travel?

“As I drove, tiny brakes spread across the stiff skin of my abdomen.”

All dripping fluid with an awful sweet sour smell not unlike from maldehyde. Even as it soaked my clothes through to the carapulstery, I nod on a raw steak trying to properly fuel the change that was bearing down on me much too quickly. Once I reached the safety of home, I left the empty meat trays in the car and hobbled down to the hollow chiseled out behind the furnace.

Dark, warm, and private. Piping away the burning sting in my eyes, reliving my mortification at the hands of that awful boy. I shed every piece of clothing and squeezed into the space. Just in time, too. Two lacerations ran both sides of my torso and everything oozed out.

Pieces of skin fell away.

“A thin rind formed on my wet organs and bones.”

Then quickly hardened into a Christmas of sorts. Inside the brittle shell, everything was white. My eyes barely attached to my brain. Bobbed in a broth of amino acids. Watching bits of myself, teeth, fingers, liver and heart, flow by.

Little blue spheres that had formed from my tears, rotated as they drifted past. They would alter the mix as my body reformed, as would my bitterness and rage. It was best to let oneself hover in a lucid dream. A pleasant one that anticipated renewed life. But every tiny sapphire orbs spinning in that white slough reminded me

if that blob-y young face and has nasty, flapping mouth.

Finally, I felt something like a cool damp sheet settling and forming a new skin

over my refurbished organs, nerves and muscles. It was actually a flexible sort of carapace, and it was growing thinner with each moat. When it had toughened and dried, I emerged from the alcove and viewed myself in an old full-length mirror. I had already lost all the toes on my left foot during a previous metamorphosis. I had to style my long gray hair so it covered the chemically-apputated earlobes on either side of my head.

This time I found my body had carried out a mastectomy on itself. My right breast was missing, so was the little finger on my right hand. I was down to one killing claw. I trudged up the stairs to find my daughter waiting for me. Lease's eyes were red from weeping as she wrapped my bathrobe around my body.

She guided me to the dining room table, served me tea and brought out a plate of honey and sesame seed candy. This one took two days. You lost to breast this time, and this is only supposed to happen once a year.

“This is the third time in what? Eight months? Nine months?”

Nine. My voice sounded thin and wispy. The change was supposed to be a renewal. I felt so diminished, so damn tired. Please don't be hurt. I have to say this. No one in our clan has ever lived to see 70.

Our men never make it past 50.

I know, I know. I'm a study every day. I will miss you every day, but you keep hunting and for humans too. Not for a long time, actually. I haven't been all that successful. She was right. I no longer hunted within our clan, even though our own kind provided the best support for our transformations.

The last time I ate one of our own was eight years ago when a certain mechanic cheated me. I picked up my car just as he was closing, bit off his head and nod the rest of him down to his shoes, right in the service bay. I was slower than I used to be, however, and that meant I could easily have the tables turned on me. It also seemed that I was a test case for what, if anything, supported my deteriorating DNA in my advanced years. Lisa reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

I know your generation did things differently. You took the head off your first mate. He was such an asshole.

I didn't elaborate nor did I share that I also ate everyone of her half brothers and sisters long before Lisa was ever born. They were growing up to be jerks too.

Of course not. However, my son, like all males of our kind, was smaller and weaker than his mate.

The women of Lisa's generation were not as strong as her four bears either. Counting on animals for fresh kills and a greater alliance on human food took its toll over the course of a lifetime.

“Mom, it's painful to watch what you're going through. I know you're not happy. Why are you hanging on?”

What else is there? She fussed over me, suggested I see our doctor, but our physicians are not like human doctors.

I know mine, a middle-aged male, would look me over and calculate how easy it would be to take down a wise and old female.

Before I went back to the supermarket, I paid a visit to the burial grove where my mother, my aunt, and some of my cousins had gone to die. It was a cold November night, but I took off my shoes and socks. Sanked my nails into the bark of a white pine and climbed to the top. I sat on a branch opposite the one where mother's fragile husk still hung, fluttering and twisting in the wind. She had curled up in a fetal position, so the shell resembled a giant locused with a human head.

“I have human friends. When we go out to lunch, I eat rare burgers and steak tips. Many of these women are old with their share of ailments. They like to talk about their spiritual beliefs.”

I miss my dad so much, they might say, but I feel he is watching over me, or I know my sister is waiting for me. They like to describe their ideas of heaven or reincarnation. It all sounds so lovely, so full of hope.

Here in the death grove I asked mom and aunt Francis and cousin Barbara if they could hear me, if there was anything they could tell me about death.

I heard nothing but the rattle of frail husks of what they once were. "I'm so afraid, I don't want to die."

“I climbed down the trunk head first and drove to the supermarket where I suffered my great humiliation. I didn't know blobby boy is work schedule, but I would return as often as I needed to.”

I drove into a field near the store, crept to a tree that hung over the roof of the building and climbed high enough to survey the parking lot and the dumpsters in the back. I was in luck. Young Daniel came out the rear door, laden with flattened boxes for recycling. After he re-entered the store I snuck down to the dumpster, undressed and hid. I would have to overcome him with only one killing claw. That meant less venom and more time needed to incapacitate him. He looked like he spent all his free time in a chair, playing games and binge watching something or other.

Even so one good punch through my flexible but thinning carapace could cave in my sternum and rib cage. On the other hand I would get to watch the dawning dread on his fat face as I stretched open my jaws. The door opened again and Dan emerged with his young friend, the kind boy who had called him out on his cruelty. I waited for the boy to dump his trash and turn away, then I shivered violently, which made my arms, fingers and legs rasp like a giant cicada. Hey, hear that? What is that? But his friend was already back inside the store. As Dan peaked around the corner of the dumpster, I stepped forward. He gaped at my naked body, the stringy muscle of my thighs, my chest with one breast sagging, the other completely missing.

Nictitating membranes that over my eyes as I swung my left arm, clawed finger extended against his neck. Flem gurgled in his throat. His eyes widened and he sagged heavily. Even in my decrepitude I was stronger than a sedentary human. I caught him under the arms, gritted my teeth, and dragged him into the trees behind the store. There was a kettle hole where I had bundled my clothes. I released the boy's body and let it roll to the bottom. His friend called from the rear door. "It Dan? You coming over?" "Dan?" He waited a few beats. "Don't screw around. I'll see you there."

Anything you want to say to this boomer? I dropped my lower jaw, stretching the cartilage binding the mandibles. The tough mouth parts lowered over my anthropoidal teeth.

“As the orifice yawned impossibly large, I fit the entirety of Dan's big head inside, and snapped it off as easily as shearing down the lion tops.”

I'd read somewhere that a decapitated head is aware of its surroundings for nearly 30 seconds before the lights go out. I hoped that was true.

My throat widened to accommodate that first mouthful, then I turned my attention to knowing away the rest of his body. It took hours. The extension of my stomach made me look eight months pregnant.

I lay back in a bed of dead leaves, listening to my gut purer as it digested. It had been months since I'd had a meal this satisfying. I could have slept for days, but as the moon set, I bathed in the black water pooled at the bottom of the kettle hole, wiped my body free of blood with Dan's shirt, dressed and crept through the woods.

“Mindful to avoid the camera's mounted at the corners of the grocery store. I found my hidden car and drove home.”

Danny Boy had provided a huge quantity of luxurious, fresh and nutritious meat. It took more than a week to digest it all. I felt more vigorous and alive than I had in a long time.

I followed the news about his disappearance. His car was still parked in the store a lot when the manager opened up the next morning. Police found his torn and bloody clothes in the kettle hole, testing found Dan's DNA alone. No doubt there were traces of some non-human saliva if they bothered to look for it. The search expanded to local pawns and swamps. On the date was called off, I heard a knock at my door. On my front porch to a Dan's friend, the other stockboy from the supermarket.

Mrs. Weber? Yes, but how did you...

I'm sorry. My name's Jamal. I wanted to talk to you before you left the store last week. I felt so awful for what my friend did. You took off so quickly, I just had time to grab a photo of your license plate. I found your information at the R&B website. He paused waiting to hear what I had to say. Why did you do that? You had no right? I really don't want to talk about that day. I know. I know. It was wrong, but I wanted to do a wellness check. I could see you weren't well and felt someone owed it to you.

I wanted him to apologize, but now... He paused and took a few deep breaths. Now he is missing, and no one can figure out what happened.

“And it just seemed important to make things right with you in case he... In case he never can. I could feel my indignation softening. Jamal nodded.”

I wanted to do something for you. Like if I could do the right thing, maybe it helps Danny somehow. Maybe we'll find him. He was a young human with a simple earnest faith. If he did enough good deeds, God would return Dan, dead or alive to his loved ones. It was touching. All right. What did you have in mind? I noticed you have a lot of leaves in your yard. I watched from the windows as he spent several hours raking and bagging leaves.

Other side of build he was strong and tireless, like most active teens. He took off his jacket as he worked up a sweat, and I could see how muscular he was. I offered to pay him which he refused. Then ordered a delivery of pizza and soda which he happily consumed. He asked polite questions about my children and grandchildren.

His eyes nested over and so did mine.

“I'll come back soon. Finish an yard clean up that needs to be done.”

Jamal wiped grease off his mouth as he rose to leave. No, you've already done too much. He waved my protests away. You remind me of my grandma. I used to help her all the time. I watched him drive away, weighing how easily I could take him if I let him come back. Continue to see me as a frail old woman. Trust me as utterly harmless.

Sizing him up as a potential meal did not make me proud. Most predators don't leave side by side with prey that they genuinely like. Jamal returned two weeks later just as I was on my way out to meet Lisa. I can finish up the yard work today while you were away if you're okay with that.

“Tomorrow's Thanksgiving doesn't your mom need you to run errands or something?”

We're a big brood in my house. I'm the baby. If I annoy everyone else enough they tell me to get out of the way. Is that by design? The boy grinned.

Now I'll never say. Are you having a company tomorrow?

I'll be at my daughter's house with my son and his family. Also a big brood. I didn't tell him that our thanksgiving included a roast turkey with yams and stuffing. Lisa and Eric wanted their children to be exposed to the traditions of their human schoolmates and friends. But the star of the feast would be an entire hunch of raw beef, meat, sliced, thin and piled high on an enormous platter. It gave the family the basic nutrition they needed to grow.

However my grandchildren, even the girls, were spindly weak and pallid like veal calves. My daughter and son-in-law like most of their generation insisted the old ways were dead. I kept my mouth shut but I grieved, knowing this could well be the end of us. I returned from my outing with a nice autumn bouquet for Jamal to give to his mother. I asked him for news on his missing friend. Jamal shook his head.

"He's vanished. Without a trace. If I weren't for the bloody clothes you'd think you'd been abducted. Damn is dead." "I'm so sorry Jamal. I extended my hand and thanked him." "I'll come again if it's nose."

"I didn't protest this time. As much as I liked the young man I knew by the first snow my body would need a fresh kill to keep going.

Why did he have to be such a sweetheart?" Early in December there was a six-inch snowfall. I could drive over to run errands but I didn't look forward to shoveling it. I came home to find the walkway had been cleared and my front door was wide open.

“There were footprints in the flower bed where I hid an extra key under a rock.”

The key was where it belonged but that didn't mean he hadn't used it. I knew I had locked the door. When I stepped back on the paving stones my foot slipped right out from under me. I landed hard on my back banging both elbows against the ground. I must have cried out because suddenly Jamal bolted out my front door, a bag of ice melt in his arms. "Oh, I am so sorry. You left your door unlocked. I came in to see if you had any salt for your walkway.

I found some in the basement." "I had locked the door. I knew I had but kept my suspicions to myself." "Are you hurt?" "He extended a hand and helped me to my feet. I winced but shook my head." "Oh, I eased my arms out of my coat sleeves. The carapace on one forearm bore a finely webbed crack, almost like an egg shell.

A trickle of plasma leaked through the abrasion. Jamal stared at it, his brow furrowed. I quickly pressed a damp towel to it and went on the offensive. "What were you doing in my house?" "I was wrong. I thought it would be a nice surprise if I had everything shoveled and salted by the time you got home." "Where else did you go besides the basement?"

"I wanted to ask what he had seen down there, such as a cozy dark elcove chiseled into the foundation behind the furnace.

"Only the basement Mrs. Weber, I promise. I wasn't snooping. There was no salt in the shed, so I thought I would check inside. Like I said, the door was unlocked."

“"I didn't contradict him. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder."”

"It's okay, Jamal. I appreciate all you've done. My anger evaporated. Although I still felt uneasy. I really liked this boy. His kindness was so touching. Just the other day I had resolved not to eat him after all. I realized now I could not let him live. He went outside to finish the shoveling. I set out cookies and made some cocoa, inviting him to sit at my dining room table when he came back in. Jamal sat across from me, gave me an appraising look as I raised my own mug.

"What happened to your little finger?" "I never had one. I lied." "I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry."

“"Not a problem. Would you mind helping me with one more thing? I want to bring my Christmas lights down from the attic."”

"Sure. I'll put them up for you if you like." "No, Jamal. You are doing too much. I'm sure your mom has plenty of things you could help with." "I pulled down the attic ladder and climbed up. Jamal following as I pulled boxes toward the entrance." "Why don't you do your mults up here, rather than in the basement?"

"Stunned, I whirled around. There was a pewter sheen in his eyes. My heart thudded as I raised my one-killing claw. I spiked at the air.

"Mist the boy completely and stumbled forward falling to my knees." "He slapped both fists against either side of my neck. His killing claws delivered a pair of hornet stings. Then all sensation bled into the floor." "You! You're nothing like..." "All the males, you know?" "He squatted in front of me."

"As soon as I saw it was happening to you in the supermarket, I knew what you were. You're one of the boomers holding onto your place in the world. Taking everything you can from the younger generation. You're living in such misery. But you won't just go somewhere and die." "There was pity in his eyes even though his smile was a sneer of contempt. My muscles were growing slack. It was all I could do to raise my eyes to his." "My parents rejected the old ways, hunting on the animals and buying from the butcher shop. They're wasting away. But my brothers, my friends, we want to go back to our roots.

Just not exactly the way you all did." "I wanted to ask the details. How he grew to be so robust a hunter who was the equal of any future mate. My mouth cracked open but no sound came out." "The best prey is our own kind. But my girlfriend doesn't want to mate with me just to bite my head off. She wants someone who can go kill for kill with her. All he raised a strong brood of nymphs. So how can we do that?" "I suspected I knew. But Jamal was eager to tell me anyway."

"There's a lot of you boomers out there. We're eating your generation just to guarantee we don't go extinct."

“"Seriously, you should have offered yourself to us a long time ago."”

"He opened his mouth, dropping his lower jaw to his chest. The horny mandible slid over his teeth. My little head fit neatly inside his mouth. A parently reason does persist in a decapitated head. I feel my face pressing against Jamal's velvety throat, sliding down into his stomach. I feel the burning of acids on my skin. And as the lights go out in my brain, I accept my fate. It makes perfect sense." Let's take a short break for our sponsors who help us keep our heads above water.

No matter how old we are, we're grateful that this episode is sponsored by Better Help.

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That's BetterHELP.com/no sleep. And financial health is important, but even more important is our physical health. And turning 60 has made me focus more on what my body is telling me. And it's important for men to understand more about testosterone in the body.

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Now let's plunge back into the deep waters of horror.

“When the world collapses, and there's no time to react, how do you survive?”

In this next story, brought to us by author Andrew Welsh Huggins, our narrator has tried to survive, but must take shelter with someone he hates to do so. Performed by Dan Zapula, Mike Delgado, Antonio Milosevic. We find out if our hero can make it to the 29th day. I emerge from the woods, adjust the deer's body on my shoulders, and stare briefly at the pale circle of daytime moon over the compound. The cars and outbuilding sit maybe 200 yards above me on the other side of the road.

What was once the road? Overlooking a wheat field returning to nature. Thick now with feathery golden rod, bunches of queen Anne's lace, a few saplings, shoulder high. Though a meager to proceed, I wait a moment for my presence to register. Even this far away, I know I'm being watched. He'll keep lookouts. I would. When I'm alive after two minutes, not struck down by a slug from a rifle extended through a distant opening.

I re-adjust the deer and trudge on an upward.

Whatever my intentions, they'd be mad to ignore a visitor with a dressed deer that many mouths to feed from babies to elders.

“One more won't matter in the short term.”

If they're watching, they'll also guess I'm clean. They will have spied the desiccated hand hanging at the end of the land you'd around my neck, and are on the obvious conclusion.

When the first case is appeared, hardly more than blips on police blotters, authorities blamed drugs, magical meth, super fentanyl, wacky weed.

“Brains cooked by toxic chemicals, it was no surprise that victims lashed out in uncontrollable rage, biting chunks of flesh from colleagues, passers by.”

Family members, cracking open brain pans, desperate for the spongy muscle within, feeding an insatiable hunger. Not drugs, it turned out, not a lot of five-year-olds cooking smack on spoons, and a lot of five-year-olds turned. The Chinese were blamed next, of course, and both political parties in climate change, no one knew.

“Did it matter? All along, incubation remained a mystery, an understandable puzzle in a way. History up to that point showed us two basic manifestations of debilitation outside the lightning strike of heart attacks or aneurysms.”

One, what the talking heads dubbed "The Pox Confluence", gradual decline, infection followed by symptoms followed by weakness, aches, source, followed by a last ditch display of Agnil fever, and death. The slow observable road to death repeated in so many cancer sufferers and others. Not the case here. The other, named the plague can undrum by armchair historians who'd read Barbara Tuckman. Fine, in the morning, dotted with postules in the afternoon, dead by evening, bodily stock market crash, also not the case here. Transmission, infection, dormancy, all eluded analysis.

Epidemiologists weren't around to provide answers, because most were pulpy mounds of flesh in their labs by the end of the first week. A common transmission source was suspected, but no one could identify it. People who became overnight hermits and avoided all human contact, and people who cared closely for the injured survivors of infected attacks. Each ran the same risk of transformation. Or not, physically fine individuals and newly emerged monsters breathed the same air and drank the same water. The only consistent observation was that, after presumed but unknown incubation period, madness hatched with lightning speed on a host's final day.

You didn't become ill. You evolved instantaneously into a new species. Stories abounded of split-second transformations, smiling one moment, faced twisted into a rick to some hungry fury the next.

The results, people worked and cohabitated with their killers, until, with no time to escape. It was too late, as on the day that Broward's son ran to our door, healthy as an ox. It takes me 20 minutes to ascend the hill. The slope is easier than some in this region, but my legs are no match for the weight of a deer against the steepness of the grade. Watching my breath, I look left and see across the hills the northernmost tip of Canisus Lake. One of the finger lake's jewels, though few people, me among them, risk of visit now, too many infected between here and there, and the stories of what awaits journeyers, too grim.

Deep lake proved an inviting dumping ground when the morgue's burst at the seams and the cemeteries overflowed. I returned my gaze to the barrier before me, a wall of vans and SUVs and to end ring the property. Most sag on rims, tires long deflated, but if you look not worse than something rolled off a used carlot, gaps filled by pallets and chairs and widescreen TVs and additional assorted junk, all bound tightly with barbed wire, I have to give Broward credit.

A sound to my right, the creek of metal, the protest of long dormant hinges, the door of a black SUV opens toward me like a wing extended before flight. Nothing happens, then a boot, two boots, a boy emerges from behind the door, no, not a boy, but not so long a young man.

“He shares Broward's high forehead, shoulder-length hair, and blue eyes that match the color of the chicory flowers hugging the edge of the road's crumbling asphalt.”

Was it this boy's brother or half-brother who ran to our door? A second pair of boots, a woman in a long dress appears, a red cap covering her hair. The resemblance is overwhelming, mother and son are greeting me.

I have a little time to dwell on the conclusion, the rifles in their arms are as new looking as weapons purchased or looted only yesterday or the day before. She speaks, but a single word.

Hand. I nod, take a step forward, then another, and collapse, the deer falling before me. My efforts at projecting strength are over. She waits, impatience on her face. I count to ten, fifteen before rising. When she's certain I'm up for good, she hooks the bottom of the lanyard with the tip of her rifle and tilts it upward. Inching me close as the lanyard tugs against my neck. She examines the hand, the dried flesh, the ridges of finger bones, the crusty blood.

“When? Several weeks. Who? I don't know. She raises her eyebrows. I asked. She was too busy begging. She considers this, nods.”

I discreetly examine the hand around her neck and the one around the boys. What passes for passports now? A hard calculus, but what choice do we have? She studies the deer.

How much? I was hoping for accommodation. I brows up again. We're full I'm afraid. Please, it's gotten so much worse out there. I gesture out the deer.

“That must be worth something. She hesitates.”

One night. One? She studies the desperation in my eyes. My lean frame, my tattered clothes. She looks once more at the deer, at the bounty I've delivered. At least three. Two. Two. I lower my head in a display of dejected acceptance. She nods at the door of the SUV they emerged from. It's an unwieldy process, but I manage it.

Me first, then the deer which I drag through unated. I catch my breath as I finish, turn, and see-brower. He stares at me. His face, giving away nothing.

The cobblestone house was a godsend at first. Perched atop a hill with the view of the Genesee Valley sweeping below us. Unseen approach from any side almost impossible. Initially Furn and I took turns splitting watchguard shifts. Picking off the infected stragglers with our diminishing supply of ammunition. Eventually exhausted. We rigged makes shift alarms. Wires strung between posts, cans tied to the wires, candle wax melted onto the cans. The wax helped fires we lit beside the ensnared trespassers.

Burn hotter and faster. The sizzling of flesh shining from adipose rich diets dripped onto the cans and wires and posts, replenishing the snares, and so on. It couldn't last forever. We weren't fools, but what choice do we have? We were wrong. We had a choice. His name was Brower. He arrived one day and shouted across the yard, keeping his distance from the alarms. I can protect her. I hide the small hand around his neck.

Natural. Now. You're old enough to be her father. I wouldn't be her father.

“The comment aimed at my little sister was enough to turn my stomach because of the implication and the underlying truth.”

Safety in numbers was everything now. Ironically, Brower's presence at my doorstep alone confirmed this. Stand-alone dwellings meant death. McMansions became morks. With his well-protected compound, Brower offered a respite from danger. Because of that, who he took to bed, and how many, was his prerogative. I'd heard whispers that he implemented his own version of Dwado Sr. Instead of Vassal's brides on their wedding nights, though, it was the female companion of anyone seeking refuge. The same whispers said male travelers who refused lost that appendage most precious to us now, a hand, and Brower gained the woman's bed regardless.

“Difficult to say if all that was true. That many gardens, livestock, and guns are difficult to manage one hand.”

The hands had to come from someplace, though. In the end, I refused his offer.

Furn was a shy, introverted, seventeen, always hunched over her diary.

Bookish, when we had schools, head filled with dreams of science experiments. Physically, she might have presented as a woman, but her thoughts and experience were far from what Brower had in store for her. I won't ask again. You're on your own after this. I understand. I hope you do.

“He spoke with compassion, though, not malice, which is why I was willing to help when the boy appeared a few weeks later, 11 or 12 at the oldest.”

Eyes wide, limbs skinny like winter branches, crying that Brower, his father, was in trouble. He was cornered and needed help. His father was willing to rescind elements of his previous invitation, the boy said, though he didn't say rescind. He said, he says he won't touch the girl. I hesitated, thinking of our food stores. Three weeks left at most. I might be able to survive alone. But the two of us, I brought the boy inside, locked him in the pantry. Locked fern in her bedroom with our sharpest knife, moldy biscuits and a bucket, and told her I'd be back as soon as I could.

I grabbed a second knife and headed for the far fields.

No one knows who first thought of the hands, though no surprise how the custom began. At some point a healthy individual came into contact, with an infected severed hand. A surplus existed because of the savagery of counter attacks. People's attempts to fight back using hose knives, swords, plates of glass, anything sharp. Usually to no end, but a few lucky ones walked away. It turned out that even detached, even a day old, three days, two weeks. The hands of the infected interacted with uninfected flesh, like acid on soapstone. It didn't take long to determine the opposite was true.

A healthy, detached hand steamed and sizzled against the chest of someone infected. An infected hand hanging from an infected person's neck? It roamed the victim's chest like a slow moving spider, as if seeking union. What didn't react was a healthy hand hanging around the neck of a healthy person. A traveler's talisman was born. Travel drops when hands are currency, which made compounds like browers so sought after, a refuge, if you could reach it and earn admittance. Inside, I'm searched, of course, as is the deer's cavity. These are rightfully skeptical people.

We're not so far gone that the story of Odysseus and the Trojan Horses forgotten. The discovery of the buck knife strapped to my right ankle doesn't do me any favors. The two men searching me, lean with ropey musseled arms, plant me face down on the inner courtyard's hard pan Earth.

I nod, grateful to keep my head and my hands. I don't remark on browers' lack of condolences for my sister, or for his son, the one who came to our house that day.

“Death is too unremarkable now. The fact you could argue he owed me also goes on said. I'd had my chance thanks to his offer to wed fern, regardless of what happened afterward.”

Ten minutes later, I'm in the compounds dining hall, a cold echoing space at the far end of a pole barn converted into residential use. I expect retribution for the oversight of the knife.

Instead, I'm handed a bowl of porridge, leavened with a poached egg and actual cheese. I shovel the food, gulping with gratitude. Two women, my overseers, look away, appalled.

“Cara, she of the red hat who greeted me today, and a woman called Nicole. I apologize, mouthful. I can't afford for them to think I'm not ravenous.”

Any sign that I arrived well fed, as I did, would be excuse enough to change their minds and kick me out after one day instead of two.

I need to make it clear that every second inside the compound counts. I'm escorted to the garden afterwards.

Given a bucket and told to pluck hornworms from the tomato plants, but not to kill them. Nothing goes to waste here, I'm told. A few hours later, I'm escorted to a room two doors down from Brower's bedroom and locked inside for the night, alone, except for a waste pan.

“I suspect this proximity to Brower is not a mistake. I'm someone he wants to keep close. When dinner arrives, I realize my punishment was simply delayed.”

I'm handed a bowl of writhing hornworms. I managed to, before vomiting. Afterward, I lie in a corner on a straw stuffed mat, hoping for sleep. The room is black. No chance for even a sliver of moonlight. Despite my circumstances, I thought consoles me. They stopped searching me after finding the buck knife. I arrived too late to help Brower, the day his son ran to me seeking aid. He had apparently fought as attackers off himself. There was no sign of him when I reached the maple tree for fields over with a boy directed me.

The tree, a survivor of the firewood frenzy that gripped the world before population collapse rendered the need for fuel in multiple hearths unnecessary. Examining the remains of three infected near the base of the tree, I could only assume that Brower fled for safety after dispatching the trio. Whether he was alive or healthy was another question. What he was doing with his son this far out was also unclear. I took a few minutes to examine the bodies of the infected, gingerly checked for anything useful in their possession.

I claim the still functioning wristwatch and hurried home. I didn't want to leave Furn alone locked in her room with only her diary for company for too long. In a rush, I missed what I concluded later. The three infected had been dead long before that day. I was looping up the driveway when I heard the cry like an eagle cut down mid-flight. I ran. Chaos greeted me inside. I went cold seeing the pantry door hanging on a single hinge. The space inside empty. Furn! I found the boy in Furn's upstairs bedroom. The door lying in the hallway ripped off both hinges. The strength to carry out such destruction bare-handed was unimaginable once upon a time. Not so much in recent years. The boy had Furn pinned to her bed.

Horrified, I watched as her arms and legs rose and fell, in a last ditch effort to defend herself. Only to realize the movement wasn't conscious, but instead resulted from her body's involuntary flailing. Lims flopping from the ferocity of the boy's assault, the intensity of his feeding, teeth sunk into her neck. He shook her like a dog with a rag doll. Blood painted the bed spreads, the walls, the floor. I held back, resisting the urge to rush to Furn's side despite my despair.

I flung the knife with all the strength I had, channeling my anguish over the remains in the bed, what was left of the person I was meant to defend, and instead left to die. My aim was true. The knife sank deep into the boy's right eye, a good four inches of blade embedded in his brain. He shrieked, spun, collapsed. I ran back downstairs, waited outside a full five minutes. Reanimation, even with such a grievous injury, was not unheard of. cautiously, I went back up, walked to the threshold of the door, peaked inside. I was safe. The boy hadn't moved. He must have transformed minutes after I left to help his father. Normal, then possessed, in a matter of seconds. I walked around his body, and approached the bed, getting as close as I could before encountering Furn's blood.

“Anything she shed, even in the seconds after the first bite, likely contained the contagion, I longed to weep, but the shock was still too raw. To deep, I shifted to my left, forcing myself to take a closer look.”

That's when I saw it. In a corner, like a forgotten toy, untouched by the gore flung from the bed, surrounded by a half circle of dry floor. Furn's severed left hand.

On my second day in the compound, I dig la trains. It's possible to view this as further punishment, but there is no mistaking the fact that the holes are needed.

“Cara hadn't lied. The compound is at capacity. Every aluminum gardening shed, every dented yellow school bus, every tattered nylon tent, is full.”

Well worn paths indicate frequent foot traffic, multiple lines flutter with drying clothes like tattered ship sales.

The compound has many children, and from closer observation, I observe that both Cara and Nicole, a second wife, are pregnant.

“I imagine Furn, alive in the same condition, then shake the thought away, keep your eyes on the prize, not the skies.”

Born multiple handwritten signs of fixed to the Cara's walling us in. The message clear, no day dreaming here, head tilted upward to admire a blue sky or waxing moon. It's a sentiment I can admire. Lunch is a simple affair of bread and apples. I brace for hookworms for dinner, but I'm apparently forgiven. Instead, I enjoy a Venison's stew prepared with a portion of the bounty I carried in the day before. Afterwards, Broward stands beside me, arm around the shoulders of a woman named Amanda. I'm sorry I can't ask you to stay. She wears the red woolen cap I'd seen on Cara's head the day before. The significance comes to me after a moment.

It is the turn of Amanda, wife number three, to share Broward's bed two doors down from my makeshift cell. I understand, I appreciate the meals you've provided. You're welcome to return. Dear. He glances at my empty bowl of stew. I thank him. He shakes my hand. I'll be up by dawn to scorch out. I step into my room and lay down on my mat as Broward closes and locks the door behind me. Slowly, the sounds of the compound dissipate. The complaints of children not ready for bed fading away. The footfall of stalking feet replacing the clumping of boots. As I lay away, listening, I hear moaning from Broward's bedroom in rhythm with the creaking of springs. I wonder if Amanda wears the red hat all night.

It was pointless to clean up Furn's bedroom. The best I could do was throw open the upstairs windows and let the elements take charge. I was abandoning the second floor anyway.

I would sleep on the couch for now until I decided my next move. After dragging the blankets from my bed downstairs, I returned a final time to Furn's bedroom.

It sat half on half off the highest shelf of the bookcase. On the far side of the room away from the gore, impossible to miss. I decided to chance it. I used a napkin to rub it down, a feudal gesture if it was contaminated, but I felt better.

“I stepped into the hallway, turned to the most recent entry, and began to read. A minute later, I slumped to the floor, a gasped of course.”

A compound this size with so many people isn't entirely silent even at night. After the sounds from Brower's bedroom finally subside, new noises take their place. Crickets.

The windows rattling from a night breeze, snores, farts, size, the shifting of a waste bucket. I stay awake, waiting. From time to time I check my watch, the one I liberated from a member of the trio that supposedly attacked Brower.

“One of two items not found in the search of my person the previous day, 1115 pm, 1130, 1145.”

I wasn't surprised that Furn figured it out, proud even, worrying the problem in her diary day after day, running calculations based on what we'd both seen and observed,

pouring over the newspapers and magazines that piled up an hour hallway in the days and weeks before such deliveries abruptly ended, scanning the sky's day and night, but the telescope she received on her last before everything birthday. Sampling rainwater with her final Christmas gift, a national geographic chemistry kit, she'd always been good at science, in her neat looping cursive, she laid out her findings, a 29-day cycle, 28 days of dormancy of utter normalcy, followed by instant illness, at the beginning of the 29th day,

how exactly this happened, she couldn't speculate, but why, the answer, the source of infection, was above us the whole time, 1155, a baby's cry, then silence, I stand, approach the door, still grappling with the finding, I read Furn's final hypotheses, a healthy detached hand reacts when hung around the neck of an infected, and infected hand signals infection in the person wearing it, a healthy hand can hang safely around the neck of a healthy person, however,

because of genetic compatibility and infected person can safely wear without indication of illness, the hand of a relative, a sister, for example,

tears streaming down both cheeks, I stepped back into Furn's bedroom, tiptoed past the remains of the boy, skirted the bed, and retrieved Furn's hand, she'd known, she knew what was about to happen to her, she'd heard the boy escape from the pantry, did she guess the boy was a bioweapon, punishment by brow or for her, our refusal of his approaches, the offer of his bed of a red cap for Furn in exchange for our safety, impossible to say, what was clear though, was that the boy's 29th day began when I locked him in the pantry,

“which brow or had known, meaning Furn wasn't the only one who figured things out, except for the secret of the Siddling's hand, that was her discovery alone, Furn's final gifts to me were somehow hacking off her hand in time before she was attacked,”

and leaving her diary for me to find, knowing as the person who understood me best, what I would do after reading it, which was, I've ventured outside that night at midnight, and looked up for a long, long time, two minutes remain, although the undercurrent of night sounds persists, everything points to a settlement to sleep for the night, babies, children, adults, I tiptoed to the door,

I perspire, anxious over my work on the lock, but for other reasons too, 11.59 pm, quietly, ever so quietly, I pull the door open, I stand just inside my room, arms at my side, I regret just for a moment, how crowded the compound is, then I recall the remains of Furn on her bed,

“Furn, who figured it out, but too late to save herself, our blood, a salty oceanic remnant coursing through our bodies,”

tides higher than ever before with the changing weather, the moon's magnetic influence magnified, unbeknownst to anyone else, when the orb was stared at a certain way, for long enough,

its image burned into our retinas, and triggered something internally, a shift in salinity, and chemical properties that didn't manifest right away, something that needed several days and weeks to cook to a boil, 29 days in fact, the full length of a moon cycle, keep your eyes on the prize, not the skies, the proof of infection, eyes stinging slightly the next time one glanced at the moon, but few figured out that symptom, Furn, Rower, and now me, I start a sensation warming in my stomach,

“craving like nothing I've experienced before, I rub my fingers over my teeth and anticipation, I feel strength course through my arms,”

I recall my nighttime foray outside the cobblestone house, the day Furn died, at almost the exact time, standing in the next field over,

raising upward, unblinking, drinking in the lunar glow, then timing my arrival at Brower's compound, I step into the hallway as my vision dims, I know from Furn's diary that a new site will replace it soon, I turn stiffly and position myself facing the door to Brower's room at the end of the hall,

around the corner perhaps far enough away from the dormitories and the nursery, I stagger, then write myself, hunger burns my brain, my 29th day has begun.

It has been an absolute joy, I don't have to do the nursery voice, okay, take off the nursery voice. It has been an absolute joy to present these stories to your listeners, this podcast has meant the world to me and I know it does to you too,

“having been here for 23 of the 24 seasons which still blows my mind, I'll say that I think at this point there's probably no getting rid of me,”

in less, oh here, okay, here he is yet Dave, okay David, I shouldn't call him Dave, now I'm in trouble for that, yes, I'll go back to the, I'll go back to the base, they only let us out every, I'm, no, I'm going, I'm just finishing saying goodbye to everybody and then I'll go and then I'll, little, I'm going to say one more thing, thank you, my friends, and I'll see you in more sleepless stories soon. Okay, I'm going, I'm walking down the stairs right now, I'm just kidding, okay, bye everybody. As our stories sink beneath the waves, we claw our way back onto dry land, join us again next time when we plunge into the chilling depths,

where water hides its darkest secrets. The no sleep podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media.

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