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Part I: The Hunt

The others were, as expected, upset.

They'd naturally reacted with horror at the sight of Charles and Meg being far more advanced in their conditions than before; Kelly and Amanda were visibly rattled and kept a distance, with Alex positioning himself in front of them as if protecting them from an enemy. Joey similarly stayed back, but not so far as the girls. Only Dan and Beth didn't move away from the lovers: the former because he wanted to find out just what had and was still happening to them, and the latter because she felt that, being infected already, it didn't matter.

"What were you doing when it flared up?" Dan asked, closely examining Meg's markings.

Charles had to swallow before answering. He'd almost rather have had this conversation with his parents; at least then he could introduce Meg to the family. "Having sex."

"Really rough sex," Meg absently told the blonde, watching him as he watched her.

"What, so you two were just fucking in the trees and it got worse?" Joey asked.

"I don't know!" Charles replied, throwing his hands up. "We just... We were at those ruins and this incredible urge to do it just came over us, okay? I dunno if these things showed up when we were kissing or when we were humping!"

"Dan?" Meg asked nervously. "Dan, tell me this was happening anyway. Please?"

"I'm sorry?" he blinked. "Oh, yeah, it was already happening anyway. I think having sex just sped the process up. I mean, we're all infected with --- well, whatever it is --- and screwing around really gets the blood flowing. It's like exercising in cold weather: it actually gets you colder faster because your sweat will freeze."

As he had been talking, Beth had moved over to Charles and was running her fingers over his large spots, which even he had to admit were strangely intricate.

"I'm feeling a kind of fuzziness to these things now," she told Dan. "You think this disease makes you grow hair?"

Dan was shaking his head. "No, no, I don't think that's right. I shave to keep myself fast in the water, like any swimmer, but if this stuff made hair grow, then I'd have all those fine little ones back, all that 'peach fuzz' stuff that people joke about." He sighed. "I don't think this disease makes you hairy."

"Can we stop calling this a disease, huh?" Charles asked. "I don't like the idea of being labeled 'diseased.' "

"So what's the story?" Kelly practically yelled, even though she was only thirty feet away. "What's wrong with them?"

"Oh come on," Joey groaned, rolling his eyes. "You heard them, they weren't speaking goddamn Navajo."

Kelly huffed at his bluntness. "You don't have to rub it in. I was just asking."

"Didn't have to ask."

Charles narrowed his eyes. Meg was right; Joey was a total prick.

"Well, um, maybe," Amanda spoke, "maybe it does make you hairy, but it's a 50/50 chance? I mean, I don't see Joey or Beth or you having any more hair than when we first met, but Kelly and me both have fuzzy butts--"

"Excuse me?" Kelly stared. "I have a fuzzy butt?"

"Well, yes," Amanda nodded. "Your chest looks a little silvery, too, but it's really obvious on your butt. Mine looks the same, but not in silver. I-in fact, I'm probably the best example: I'm hairy and hairless. Look at my legs and then my butt."

Dan quickly gave her a once-over, seeing that her legs (which had darkened a bit since earlier) were smooth as could be, and yet her posterior was covered with a fine veil of hairs, which he had trouble telling as to being either clear or pink.

"She's right," he told everyone. "There's something much more to this disease, but that was obvious, since none of us have the same markings."

Charles held up a hand. "I'm sorry, but come on, can we say something other than 'disease'?"

"Grow a pair, huh?" Joey frowned. "If you and Meg just gave each other super AIDS, you think sugar-coating it will make a difference?"

Charles stiffened. "Shut up, Joey."

"Doesn't change what I said."

Right in the kisser. Joey's head snapped back as Charles's hand flared with pain; he'd never actually punched anyone before, outside of that tussle on his school bus in middle school, which he didn't count because of how half-assed his shot had been then.

But this one was enough to split Joey's lips and send him back a few steps, enough for Alex to take the initiative and grab him so that he didn't strike back.

"I'm gonna kick your ass for that," the bald boy seethed.

"I told you to shut up."

Joey surged against Alex, but couldn't break free. His face contorted with fury, and Charles swore he could see some patches of skin begin peeling, revealing a stronger discoloration underneath.

The girls (Amanda and Kelly, rather) shrieked and leapt away from the two; Beth and Meg both adopted more serious attitudes: Meg for backing up her mate, and Beth for feeling a predatory desire take root in her. There was action, and she wanted some of it.

Dan, a stone-cold look on his own face, stepped forward and placed his hand on Joey's chest. Immediately, the boy stopped struggling, and an intimidated look covered his face.

"You aren't going to kick my ass," Dan told him, his tone allowing no room for argument. "Go cool your heels, and don't do anything stupid. I am really not in the mood."

Grasping that he was facing someone who was more than capable of handing him his head, Joey began squirming to get out of Alex's hold; when released, he couldn't disappear into the foliage fast enough.

"Uh, guys?" Kelly called out. When everyone looked to her, she said, "Look at yourselves. It's getting worse."

She was right: the markings, even on Charles and Meg, had gotten stronger: Amanda's legs were almost black and the rest of her seemed rosy; Kelly's "silver" portions had become a sickly white while the rest of her was a gentle brown; Alex was mottled with darks and light; Beth's stripes were jet-black; Dan's pattern was dark gray and strangely familiar to Charles's eyes; and Charles and Meg had both grown many more fine hairs all over their bodies.

After everyone had given themselves a good look, Meg said, "It's the adrenaline." She met Dan's eyes. "All the activity, the excitement, it must be what's pushing this thing to change us faster."

Slowly, he nodded, eyes wide with realization. "That's the trigger! We must all have similar adrenal systems and genetic coding and all that, just the right match to make sure this infection takes hold."

"If we were any less healthy, we'd die," Alex speculated.

"And any healthier, and we'd overcome it," Meg caught on. She looked at her hands. "I don't remember my nails being this sharp." In fact, they were almost claw-like, narrow and curved. Strangely, though, they didn't feel any different; they felt almost natural. "I don't know why, but I want to use these."

"You mean on Joey?" asked Charles.

"I mean in general. These things look like serious business. I just, I don't know, I just want to chase something down and gut it."

"Oh, shit," Alex said, looking around. "Where's Beth?"

---

Part II: The Attack

They reluctantly split up to search for Beth (with instructions to avoid Joey until he wasn't being a jerk). Amanda had been paired with Kelly (which seemed to slightly unease Alex, who'd been paired with Dan; Charles and Meg were of course together.

Dan had reasoned that Charles and Meg were to check out the ruins again, as they were there most recently and would be the most likely to notice if something was amiss. Along with Alex, Dan would search the edges of the island. Kelly and Amanda were left to search the jungle in general.

"Would be easier if were just spread out and searched the jungle in a single sweep," Kelly grumbled.

"But if we split up, then we can search everywhere more or less at once," Amanda countered. Even alone with only the other less-brazen girl, she kept her voice soft, as if she were afraid of harsh criticism.

"I still say it's a stupid idea, but whatever."

They searched for at least two hours, hesitantly calling out for their missing friend (for fear of being attacked, in case she'd been abducted). Kelly had to repeatedly calm down both herself and Amanda, who developed a terribly ill-timed phobia of spiders and swore she saw them often during their search. Worse yet, her own desire to flee from the danger, even though it was false, kept rising; it was as if her fight-or-flight sense was escalating as a result of her infection.

"Wait, I hear something," Amanda said, stopping so abruptly that Kelly almost bumped into her. "I think it's a fire."

Kelly's stomach turned icy. "Please God, no..."

They both listened closely, and Kelly grew more and more certain that Amanda was mistaken. She'd heard big fires before, but this continuous roar wasn't a fire, and it wasn't the wind. That meant...

"Oh God, yes, it's a waterfall."

She stepped around Amanda, leading the way through almost a half-mile of thick jungle. The two girls stepped out, gaping in awe at what they found: a waterfall was indeed the culprit of the mysterious sound, easily thirty feet high. At its base was a medium-sized pool, which flowed out into the ocean in a river almost ten feet across and perhaps six feet deep. Breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of so much running fresh water, Kelly gingerly stepped into the water. Almost at once, her tension all but vanished, and she splashed herself clean, drinking a bit from cupped hands.

"This is much better than drinking the rain from leaves," Amanda sighed. She also entered the pool just enough that her thighs were wet, and mirrored Kelly's drinking. She knew there were probably some pathogens, but she just didn't care; the water was fresh and refreshing and so what if she got just a little sick?

She filled up quickly and, feeling somewhat more comfortable, moved deeper into the pool, up to her waist. The strange growths (which she was sure were tiny feathers) felt funny in the water, but she paid them little mind. More than ever, even more than the time her father had made her help remove the garden's top soil, she wished she had some body wash and shampoo to get clean.

Absentmindedly, she waded deeper yet, until her shoulders could easily be slipped under. Amanda rubbed her neck to relieve the stress. The water's coolness helped ease her into a relaxed state, one in which she didn't even notice that things were about to go horribly wrong.

A moment ago, Kelly had been gently scrubbing her lower areas, feeling more than a little self-conscious about Amanda's "fuzzy butt" comment, when she noticed something sticking up from the water at the far end of the pool. At first, she thought they were rocks, but when she focused on them, she realized with a surge of horror what they really were: shark fins, one of the dorsal and one for the tail.

She'd seen Jaws a hundred times; who with even a bunny-ears TV hadn't? And while she knew that sharks were portrayed with horrid inaccuracy in Benchley's and Spielberg's works, they were still truly horrifying creatures that had long kept her from going more than ten feet into the ocean's waves. Every time she saw a program or film about sharks attacking people, she'd feel her skin crawl and couldn't help but imagine just how frightening and excrutiatingly painful such an experience would be.

...And now, there she was, practically face-to-face with the real thing.

She, like the others, had thought the island was strangely harmless, that their biggest enemy was starvation or perhaps the lack of connection to human society.

But as the reality of the situation sunk in, that she was in the watery domain of an apex predator and that she was just helpless prey, she did the only thing she could do.

She leapt out of the pool and ran like a coward.

Kelly's abrupt exit had caught Amanda's attention just enough that she was again aware of her surroundings, right before something powerful grabbed hold of her right leg and pulled her under the water. Thankfully, she hadn't inhaled, or she might have started drowning.

The attack was the most surreal experience she'd ever had: it hurt, and she could feel the pain, but she could only mildly feel it, as if she'd been given painkillers. The thrashing about also was not as severe as she'd always thought such things would be. Maybe her attacker was tired? She tried to fight it off, striking weakly against it (and just what kind of sea creature was it, anyway? A shark? An octopus? Because her hands were hitting something smaller than a shark and it seemed to have limbs).

As suddenly as it all began, it stopped, and Amanda was left floating in dark serenity underwater. She kept her eyes shut, but swam to the surface, drawing a much-needed breath. Pulling herself onto the grass, she rolled over onto her back, blinking as she took a look at herself to see just how much damage her attacker had done...

...And that was when she began screaming.

---

"Alex, wait!"

Dan was in excellent physical condition. He swam like a madman, ran fairly often, and hit the gym five days a week, but he still was having trouble keeping up with his friend.

They'd been exploring for a while when the Californian had stopped and, with no explanation whatsoever, turned about and began hauling ass. He was moving with such speed and single-minded focus that Dan wondered if he were actually possessed; no ordinary human could move so quickly!

It was only a few minutes before they broke the treeline, where there was a beautiful waterfall, a pool, a river...and Amanda, crying and screaming as she lay helpless in the grass.

Alex was at her side instantly, cradling her and rocking her and telling her everything would be all right, that he wasn't going to let anything else hurt her. She clutched at him, pulling him as close as she could as, little by little, her hysterics lessened.

The whole time, Dan watched them, feeling a cold pit form in his stomach. He knew people could sense when things happened to loved ones, and he knew that was what Alex had felt: that the girl he loved was in serious danger, and the feeling was so strong it had drawn him right to her like a homing missile.

Swallowing, Dan edged to the side, to get a better look at Amanda's legs.

And what he saw was only the first turn for his stomach.

The flesh was almost totally gone. Very little of it, in fact, remained, as if it had been peeled away in chunks, leaving only greasy residue. But it wasn't bone that was revealed: pink, armor-like stalks had replaced her legs, jointed at the knees and with three-toed webbed feet; bits of sickly-looking flesh were still on those, but were clearly just tattered remnants of a former body.

His reality growing firmer and firmer in his mind, Dan shifted his gaze to Alex, whose infection had manifested enough that it was clear he was turning into a human beagle with the patterns and colors he sported. Dan's stomach turned a second time.

And as he looked at himself, his stomach struggled as much as possible to turn over a third time. His flesh had taken on a black-and-white scheme, one that he was absolutely certain was for an orca.

"God, what's happening to us?" he rasped, a cold sweat forming all over his body.

---

Not far off, Beth pulled herself out of the water and onto the bank of a grotto.

She, too, had changed: her skin was akin to rubber and she'd sprouted a dorsal fin straight out the middle of her back, as well as a thick tail that was almost three feet in length. The stripes that had for days adorned her were still there, helping to declare her to the world as a tiger shark.

On her knees, propped up by her hands, she vomited, past two sets of teeth, the human ones forming an outer ring and tiger shark ones (recessed below her gums) right behind them. After a few minutes of dry heaving, knowing the last bits of dead human flesh were out of her, she reached a thinly-webbed hand up and pulled the last of her human hair from her now-smooth scalp.

Trembling in disgusted horror, she began to cry.

"What --- WHAT AM I?!"