After the brief talk that Mark had with the old man about the Giant Bear Rainforest, both begun to search for eggs. It was annoying to search for bird eggs, but Mark and the old man were experienced in hunting and they knew the usual spots were birds would put their nests in and thus the search for the eggs started.
...
One hour later,
"Found anything, old man?" asked Mark when he saw the old man coming from behind a tree with a big smile.
"Jackpot!" shouted him while raising his backpack with one hand.
"Noice!!! At least one of us had luck, because all the nests I found were empty." said Mark.
The old man came closer to Mark and carefully put the backpack on the ground, and when the old man opened the backpack, Mark saw six eggs, all of them white with but with small black dots around and a grayish color covering half of them.
"Those are snake eggs?!" asked Mark, a bit puzzled. Because those eggs were bigger than the usual bird eggs, and also the gray color around them, typical of snake eggs.
"You are right. I found them between a few leaves on the ground. Have you ever eaten snake eggs?"
Mark shook his head, "No, usually when we found snake eggs we let them be, but I guess is a different story these days, right?"
The old man nodded, and grabbed one of them, and said "You make the honors?" while extending his arm and giving one of the eggs to Mark.
"Me? But you got them. I did nothing. They are all yours." said Mark furrowing his brows.
"Come on, kid, I can tell it's not your first rodeo. You hunted before, and you know the hidden rule about a hunting party, right?"
Mark gave a sigh and grabbed the egg. The old man was right. A hunting party always shared everything they hunted, no matter the luck or bad luck of someone. Hunting was like that. Some days you got lucky while others you came back empty-handed, but a hunting party always shared equally their spoils.
"They say it's disgusting because of the format of the snake..." said the old man, looking at Mark with the egg in hand.
"Its not like I have other choice.... " said Mark, raising the egg above his head and looking at it, "My ability only let me eat mutated animals" and cracked the egg open with his fingers. The egg contents fell inside Mark's mouth and he gulped everything in one go.
The old man looked puzzled when hearing what Mark said, but did not ask further.
Mark threw the shell to the side and waited a few seconds to see if his body would react weirdly, but seeing that nothing happened, he sighed in relief. The eggs were really considered mutated animals to his ability.
"How it went?" asked the old man.
"Well... it's a mutated animal, but it's disgusting... I think.... its still moving inside my stomach...." said Mark while looking to the side with his eyes as if trying to sense what was happening inside him, but then the warm feeling came and everything stopped.
"So... what ability did you gain?" asked the old man.
Mark furrowed his brows when hearing that, but he realized why the old man had asked that. He didn't know that Mark could not gain abilities anymore.
"None, I can't gain abilities anymore." said Mark in a bitter tone.
The old man opened his mouth to ask what he was talking about, but then remembered that Mark was the guy who came from the lab, the one that was used as a guinea pig, and closed his mouth.
"Will you try or not?" asked Mark, a bit uncomfortable with the situation. "But remember... because it's an egg... we can't know what kind of ability you will gain, that, if it gives you any... Also... All abilities have defects, like mine... I can't eat normal food."
"So... they are like Kinder Eggs? Those that come with a surprise inside?" Joked the old man, but they were not laughing, because it was a bitter true, a bitter joke. The old man would risk his life on a gamble.
The old man looked at the other five eggs in his hand, and then looked back at Mark, and felt bad when realizing that Mark would have nothing to eat apart from those eggs.
They had plenty of food on the camp, food for weeks, but Mark? He would need to depend on the hunt every single day.
The old man gave a sigh and cracked open an egg inside his own mouth, gulping everything in one go. He wanted to give all eggs to Mark, but the allure of having abilities was too strong, even for an old man like him.
That was the apocalypse, and abilities were the chance everyone wanted to not depend on luck anymore, to not depend on others, to be free again.
Seeing the old man gulping the egg, Mark said, "You should feel an ich or something like that in your body... that part of your body is the one affected by the ability."
"I feel.... " said the old man, quickly putting the other eggs on the ground and scratching his skin, "My skin is itching...." and kept scratching his skin.... "Too much!!"
Mark saw the old man scratching his arms, legs, chest. The man was almost taking out his own clothes.
"Are you ok?" asked Mark, seeing the old man rubbing his back against a tree by the side.
"I'm ok... I guess... it just..." said the old man, almost not making sense, because the itching was so strong that made him want to peel off his own skin. "Arghhhhh!"
When Mark heard the man screaming, he knew things were not going well, but he stood there watching, because he knew firsthand that abilities were strange and caused weird side effects, especially when they were changing the body. But what he saw next made him feel like he knew nothing about abilities.
Because right in front of him, a few steps away only, the old man started to peel off his own skin, as if he was a hot tomato.
"ARghArh! FUUUUUCK!!!!" shouted the old man, pulling the skin from his left arm with his own nails, and blood gushed from the scar, but surprisingly, the skin came out, and he didn't stop and kept pulling more and more while screaming.