NEW CALIFORNIA, Ohio — Local man Trent Palmer desperately concealed his infected forearm from other survivors after a surprise attack from a crust punk, confirmed sources who were growing leery by the minute.
“I was searching through a dumpster behind an abandoned Denny’s when this crustie burst out of a pile of greasy rags and took a huge chunk out of my arm,” said Palmer, tying a bandana around his wrist to hide the scabs starting to spread from the wound. “I quickly told him I don’t have any spare change and he shambled away, but it was too late—I was bit. I can’t let the other guys know or they’ll kill me, or worse—kick me out of the scene.”
Other survivors in the group were becoming suspicious of his increasingly crust punk-like behavior despite Palmer’s attempts to hide the signs of infection.
“Trent’s been acting weird ever since he got back from scavenging—stumbling around searching for cigarette butts, giving himself piercings—he even started asking us all to call him Ratface out of nowhere,” said Peggy Schlitz, watching him warily from across the mess hall. “And between you and me, some of the industrial adhesive we keep around for repairs has gone missing. Trent, er—I mean Ratface—is usually a trustworthy guy, but you can’t help but notice he’s had a plastic baggie glued to his cheek for the last couple hours. Something is definitely up.”
According to the survivor group’s leader Abram Hoskins, the sinister signs of a crust punk bite move slowly, but are impossible to reverse once the infection takes hold.
“I’ve lost enough good people to know the signs of an infected crust punk bite when I see one,” said Hoskins, a former veterinarian specializing in urban rodent medicine. “You go to wash your face but the filth won’t come off, and the once-cleansing water starts to feel like acid on your skin. You’ll notice that your hair will fall out in strange patterns, and what hair remains will become matted into dreadlocks. Then one day you’ll open your shirt and find the shitty stick and poke tattoos have spread all over your body—and by then, it’s too late.”
Palmer’s transformation was later discovered after he got caught in a crust trap baited with a half-empty bottle of Colt 45, but managed to escape after gnawing his foot off.
Photo credit: Albert Baldassarre