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Why did I stay in this lousy place? It doesn’t even have the internet anymore.
Harry added another wooden plank to the barricades. He stepped back and scanned the past days’ effort. It was a towering 20-foot-tall structure that ran alongside the lake’s west bank. He was helping a small group of Patience residents build it for the past few days against the expected attack of the Greys.
Protection, of course, was an illusion. Greys will tear down this timber wall in seconds. But Harry learned that humans felt comfortable deluding themselves with perceived security in the face of catastrophe.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel impressed by their work. Despite the fact that humans are a whimsical species with a laughably simple cell structure, he came to the conclusion that their true resilience comes from helping one another.
And that’s why they might have a shot at this. This time he might not fail like Goliath did.
As he transformed back to his human form, he spotted Asta out of the corner of his eye. She hopped over a fallen log and picked a rifle that was propped up against the hole-patched wood panels where Sheriff Thompson would give the residents target practice. She blinked at Harry, a slow opening and closing of her eyes that Harry had once heard Judy refer to as a “kitty kiss”, because apparently that’s what cats do when they love their human.
Something clenched his stomach.
Asta is not a cat, and I’m not a human.
He considered returning the gesture, but before he could do anything, she had already advanced towards the small group of people preparing to depart for Jessup.
“Who wants pizza?” a voice called and brought Harry back into the present. Dan appeared on his cabin’s deck with a pizza pan, topped with steaming mozzarella and tomato sauce.
“It might not be as good as Mama Sap’s but—”
Harry dipped his fingers in, pulled out a piece, and chowed it all down while uttering sounds that could have been either praise or a shriek caused by the burning hot bread.
Pizza. Every piece, every fold was so perfectly engineered, even the Greys’ time-freezing technology could not compare. Whether it was coming from Harry's regular oven, in which he usually keeps his sweaters, or from Mama Sap's wood-fired traditional one, every mouthful was as delicious as the last.
Pizza could also be the solution to his stomach clench problem as hunger is a common cause of discomfort in human bodies. It would be unethical as a medical professional to refuse himself treatment.
“Thank you Dan. Now I have more energy to kill those insidious assholes.”
He licked the last dark chars of crispy outsides from his fingers while reaching for a second piece with his other hand. Harry didn’t have sympathy for those who attacked pizza. The pizza alone was reason enough to put his entire heart and soul into fighting for this world.
“Jay arrived in the bunker,” Asta informed D'Arcy, who was adding planks to the barricade.
“Oh, Cool,” D'Arcy said, not looking away from her work. She already had band-aids on all of her fingers.
Asta fidgeted in her place, not knowing what to look at. She seemed agitated and her brow furrowed in an odd way.
“I am not coming with you and Harry,” she said, her voice wavering towards the end of her sentence.
“OW!” D'Arcy shrieked in pain. A metal clasp scraped her thumb and Asta winced in sympathy.
“What do you mean you are not coming with us!?” D'Arcy cried while shaking her hand in pain.
“Do you want me to take a look at that?” Asta asked with a concerned look on her face.
“No!” D'Arcy grumbled, jerking her hand away. She put her injured thumb to her mouth to ease the pain.
Asta sighed and shook her head.
“I’ll try to be back before nightfall,” she said softly and jutted her chin out in a sympathetic gesture.
“You really need some help with that.”
“I don’t need your help. You go help Jessup,” D'Arcy protested.
“Look, the Jessup group needs extra protection, and I don’t want to leave them alone.”
Asta wasn’t cold, but her matter-of-fact demeanor challenged D'Arcy. She averted her gaze away from her, and noticed that Harry was standing on his deck rubbing his stomach.
“Harry!” she shouted. “Hey, Harry! Asta’s not coming with us!”
“What!?”
Harry bolted upright and sprinted towards them with his awkward alien gait. His cadence was sluggish but he was surprisingly fast.
“Asta!” Harry stood squarely in front of her and narrowed his gaze. Asta wasn’t intimidated. She quirked a brow and shook her head.
“Harry…” She began with a sigh. D'Arcy watched them as they got into one of their usual arguments where they were doing this bickering dance as if time stopped and the world was reduced to just two.
As she spent more time with both, D'Arcy wondered if they wanted these clashes to happen, rather than allowing them to happen naturally.
After a moment, she felt the need to remind them that she was still there, or else they would as well be the only people left on the planet.
“Ahem, ahem I’m dying of blood loss here,” she said, a little bored.
Harry turned, his face rather flushed, and saw D'Arcy with her injured thumb in her mouth.
“Do not lick your wounds. Your saliva contains a lot of bacteria that might cause infection,” He said with a disdain.
“You weren’t saying that when your tongue was in my mouth,” D'Arcy retorted.
An awkward silence fell between the three of them. A silence that caused Asta something of a discomfort which made D'Arcy realize that her friend didn’t want to be reminded of their kiss with Harry anymore.
Asta fumbled through her bags, checked her rifle and gave them a brief good-bye before turning back to rejoin the group on its way to Jessup.
D'Arcy, a little taken aback by Asta’s unexpected reaction, turned to Harry to ask him what was that about, but saw him looking at Asta's direction with such tenderness that the question caught in her throat.
Harry lowered his hands to his stomach. It was hurting again. He was beginning to doubt that hunger was the source of his pain. Or maybe Dan’s pizza went bad. But since all pizzas were delicious, that was out of the question.
Than the only reason could be—
“So, that was awkward.”
Harry snapped out of his reverie to see D'Arcy with a knowing smirk on her face.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “Let’s look at this thumb.”
He cleaned the swollen incision with clean water, got the first-aid kit and applied the antibacterial cream. All of these, a reflex on his hands. An inheritance he received when he took human Harry’s body. Even though his patients would continue to do the same stupid things that would waste their limited time and they would all inevitably die anyway, helping people was something that Harry actually cared about.
That, pizza, and—
“Asta,” D'Arcy interrupted his thoughts again. “So, what’s up with her, huh?”
“I love her,” he said without missing a beat as he applied bandage to the cut.
D'Arcy would scream if they weren't around people, but instead she contented herself with a little grin and raised eyebrows.
“Oh yeah?” she asked amusingly.
“I love her. That is the only explanation,” he lifted his head up from the injury. “I want to be next to her all the time. My stomach hurts when I think about her. Also, I put the last slice of Dan's pizza in her bag when I really wanted it for myself.”
“Wha—, When did you get the chan—” D'Arcy rambled through her grin.
She watched him suddenly looking vulnerable, more human than he did before. A sympathetic arm extended out to hug his shoulders.
“Oh buddy, I guess it all feels overwhelming right now but things will settle down. I promise.”
Harry nodded. He reflected on what the corpse Harry told him. Maybe he was right. He had been infected with humanity and couldn't possibly return to his previous life.
But maybe he didn't like his previous life anyway.
And maybe that's why Harry stayed.