I doubled over to dry heave above the blood slicked iron floor. Barely standing on unsteady legs, holding tight to the Skitter. The fingers of its legs were even more human up close, complete with hair on each knuckle. My scholar’s inquisitiveness rose but lost its battle with my exhaustion and I collapsed down next to the unmoving corpse. My eyes caught something unusual on the corpse’s exposed back. Our fight had pulled her tunic showing a round role in the unblemished surface right atop her tailbone. I looked to the Skitter and down at the oddity. The Skitter had a tail of increasingly small vertebrae at its end, the last of which had a hole running through it. I dropped down and wiped away the blood from the corpse’s cooling skin.

The hole was deep. My mind made the connection. I didn’t know why, but it looked like Skitters needed access to the outside of a body. Maybe to breathe. If all Skitters did, we could tell who had been infected. 

“Kill it, Ander!” Helene screamed at me. “What are you waiting for?” A fog still blanketed my mind.

I placed the Skitter down on the rusty metal of the cage floor and stomped down hard. My boot heel smashed down into its humanoid eyes but its body appeared unmarred by my blow after. I stomped again and again, but the damage to the monster was minimal, just a scuff here or a scratch there. It was wriggling more now, trying to wake up as I struggled to kill it. I abandoned the stomping, my hands tightening on the metal bar. It was tacky with partially dried blood oozing in strands as I reversed my grip on the weapon. Then I dropped my weight, ramming the sharp point of my metal directly into the space right behind its slowly opening human eyes.