21 Apple pie

Barely had Mark asked himself if he was poisoned, and an insatiable hunger assaulted him again. It was as if his body was craving for something. Mark looked at the cereal bars but didn't eat this time.

'I need to try eating something else. Maybe the cereal bars went bad,' thought to himself Mark, trying to avert his thinking from poisoned food.

While looking around for other kinds of food, his eyes glimpsed the snake, and the craving intensified even more, almost making him salivate.

Mark immediately grabbed the snake. He was doing it almost unconsciously, because the hunger he felt was something he had never felt before. It was just like an addicted person in absence from his drug.

~chomp~

Mark bit the snake's body and chewed it. The meat was raw, without cooking, but he immediately felt better.

"Ewww!" realizing what he had done, Mark threw the snake back, and spit on the ground.

~spit~

"What I was thinking? Dammit!"

He was not sure what happened, but that insatiable hunger he felt vanished. The few bites he gave on the snake were enough for him to regain his cool. "I do feel better now," said aloud Mark, realizing he didn't throw up again after eating the snake.

Mark was about to grab the water bottle and drink some water to clean his mouth and an intense heat spread all over his body, Mark felt as if his body was burning in fever, but the feeling only lasted a second, and the same way it came it vanished.

"What is happening with me? Dammit!" shouted aloud Mark, a bit furious while slamming his hand on the crate by the side. He was furious because things were not going as he imagined once he decided to hunt mutated animals. He wanted superpowers, not feel ill while eating a mutated animal.

~crack~

Mark looked to the side and furrowed his brows when seeing the crate's lid. It had a crack exactly where Mark had hit just now. The lid was not very strong, it was made of a thin layer of wood, but even so, Mark never in his life damaged wood by just slamming his hand on it. Let alone damage wood, the lid was cracked.

'The heck?'

He was lost now. He was even asking himself if he had gained strength in those last months? But slightly shook his head, denying that thought. He was the same as before, a slim guy with defined muscles but not really strong.

'Is this related to the mutated animal? But how? The thing was a stomach!' then the realization came to his mind, "Oh no, don't tell me..." Mark's mind went into a frenzy, linking things together, remembering all that he read and saw in those last few days, how the Theta radiation was created, how it affected everything, how mutated animals had more of that radiation than not mutated animals, and now this snake, with a mutated stomach, and stronger than a normal snake.

Mark glanced at the snake's body again, and almost shivered with the thought that crossed his mind just now, but he had to test it again.

Mark grabbed the snake's body, and bit it, and doing the most he could, he chewed the raw meat of the snake and gulped everything.

Mark waited a few seconds, and the heat came again, but this time it was less intense than the previous one, as if it was more gentle, as if he was bathing in sun rays on a cold day instead of a fever.

"The same feeling as before...." said Mark aloud, trying to finish his conjectures, "... lets test if I'm right" said Mark already preparing himself to hit another crate by the side, but this time, he would use all the strength he could muster, and he hit the crate itself not the lid.

"If I'm right, then this will be a game changer for me"

~bang~

Mark hit the side of the crate with a punch, and the wood on the crate broke, not much, but it broke anyway, and Mark could see the clothes inside the crate through the gap that his punch opened.

Mark's eyes widened when see saw what he did, not because he was surprised by it, but because he was correct in his thinking and the exact thing he expected actually happened, "So.... the snake stomach power is to makes me stronger by consuming mutated animals and converting it to that radiation or something like that, that's why the heat after eating..."

But just as he finished his conjectures, another thought came to mind, and he glanced at the cereal bars by the side, 'No... don't tell me...',

Mark grabbed a cereal bar and thew inside his mouth. The taste was the same as ever, and after chewing the cereal bar, he gulped everything down.

The pain in the stomach came again, and not able to hold himself, Mark vomited on the floor again.

~bleah~

"I never vomited so much in a single day in my entire life," said Mark to himself, while cleaning his mouth with his arm.

"But that proves what I was thinking, and fearing... I can't eat normal food anymore, only mutated animals and things like that"

Mark glanced at the water bottle by the side and remembered that he did not feel ill when drinking water. 'Minerals and water must be different. I need to try eating some plants born after the beats invasion,' thought Mark, remembering that he had two apples that he had not eaten yet.

Mark grabbed his backpack and took the apples out, then, looking at the reddish color of one, bit it.

It was a luxury to eat an apple or any kind of fruit in those days, Mark had not eaten one in weeks and feeling the sweet taste of the apple made him salivate, and remember about the good old days before the apocalypse, made him remember about the apple pies he father made, and the apples he eat in the morning as breakfast.

~bleah~