The few words I had been able to conjure up faded into nothing, however Sarah didn’t seem to care. She simply went on talking like she was on autopilot, just like always.
“What happened to you?” she asked. I felt a twinge of guilt join the confusing emotions I was already bogged down with. I wasn’t sure; should I have told Sarah all about Cohen and what had happened? I should have been able to do that with my best friend, but I couldn’t. The words were still stuck inside of me, the confusion and fear keeping them there.
I had apparently closed myself off so much that I didn’t even want to talk to my best friend.
“I don’t know,” I said simply. It had been so long since I had an actual conversation that I was having trouble piecing together what to say. I merely looked at her, her skin sickly grey in the darkness.
“I can’t believe it... after all this time, you’re still…” She faded off again and I could only nod. I knew exactly how she was feeling. This whole meeting was surreal. Of all the people to find alive, of all the people to run into, it was Sarah. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. The small laugh seeped through my lips at the strange absurdity of the situation.
I expected Sarah to join me, but she didn’t, instead her head whipped around dangerously as if she expected someone to jump out at us. The look on her face stung, the harsh reminder of where we were unwelcome. The laugh died in my throat and Sarah turned to stare into me, the intensity of her look sending shivers up my spine and I didn’t know why.
“How are you out? How have they not gotten you?” I asked as she leaned forward, papers and old plastic packaging crinkling under her knees.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, her head shaking as her arms clung to her sides. “They stopped chasing people a while ago. It was like they just didn’t care anymore. This area has been empty for years. I was here just looking for food. How are you… out?”
“I’ve been in my house. I never left,” I said, suddenly feeling like my excuses were inadequate. Maybe I should have just left, fought, and been with Cohen, but I had seen the flash of talons, watched the murders. The images of that first day had never faded, they were still imprinted inside of me. None of those people had any chance to live then and I had no reason to assume I would.
“They told me to stay, they brought food…” I continued, my lame reasoning fading off as Sarah interrupted me.
“You ate the food…” Her hand jutted out from where she had kept it wrapped around her, her hand resting on my shoulder awkwardly.
“Don’t ask him to Sadie’s, Lex. That would just be weird.” I jumped at the voice, the same voice as last time; young and perky. Just hearing the phrase sparked the memory of that day, hot like a branding iron to my heart. The day I asked Cohen to that dance, the warning she gave me only moments before.
It was just like before, when she’d talked about the date; her voice was more of memory than of repetition. Yet she had said it. I had seen her lips move. Fear snaked up my spine as I stared at her, her eyes moving in and out of focus quickly.
“Sarah?” I asked, careful to keep my voice low and hesitant.
She looked at me, her eyes drifting back into focus as she did. Her eyebrow rose in confusion.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked as if she was oblivious to what had just happened.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I tried to smile, but I don’t think it really took. I could still feel the fear as I tried to figure out what had just happened.
I couldn’t count it as simply being a fluke anymore, her voice was too perfect, too much the way it was. Then, to have it happen twice.
I swallowed heavily as I tried to control my panic, the fear that I had been controlling so well was coming back as quickly as if someone had just flipped a switch.
I watched her as I leveled my breathing, trying hard not to let my panic show. She sat in the darkness, holding herself like she was cold, her eyes darting around as if she expected something to jump out at us. Her actions reignited the warning lights I had been trying so hard to ignore and I leaned over to grab the torch. I couldn’t sit here in the dark anymore, something was wrong.
“You don’t really need that,” she spat, her voice hard and angry. It hissed through me like a snake, the tone sounded feral and uncontrollable. I froze at her voice, my body leaned over precariously as I fumbled toward the plastic piping.
“They don’t attack us anymore,” she continued, her words sending a wave of ice over me, her hard voice triggering something deep inside of me. I froze for only a moment before I tried to brush her words aside, but they wouldn’t leave. They only sounded more like a warning, a warning that was screaming at me to run.
“What do you mean they don’t attack us anymore?” I asked, my body moving up only enough so that I could look at her. “I was attacked last night.”
“Here? In this area?” she asked, her eyes wide in disbelief. “This area has been empty for years. They declared it safe after they cleared it out.”
“Who cleared what out?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. She said it so off handedly, like everyone should know. As if I should know. Maybe I should, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was missing something.
She’s not a threat, don’t attack. I didn’t take my eyes off her as the ridiculous words entered my mind; my more logical side was desperately begging me to think rationally.
“They cleared out all the Ulama from this area. There aren’t any more monsters here.”
I looked at her as she spoke. Her fingers kneaded into her sides while clinging to the fabric of her shirt. Her actions flamed the fear in my chest
“What are you talking about, Sarah?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice as my hand moved to grip the bed rail tightly. I hadn’t even realized what I had done until I felt the hard edge dig into my skin. “I saw one yesterday. Two. They attacked me, but I scared them away with fire.”
“I saw him at McDonalds last night, so don’t try to tell me…” she said, my whole body jumping at the sound. It was that same recorded voice before she continued on as if nothing had happened.
“They are gone.” Her voice was hard and angry again. It was nothing like what I had remembered, nothing like the sound a girl her age should be able to make. Nothing like how she had been only moments before. This voice was different and dangerous.
It wasn’t just her voice that had changed. I stared at her through the dark as my hand kneaded around my rail, she looked nothing like she had a moment before. Her skin looked even greyer, her eyes too dark.
I stared at her, my heart rate picking up as everything tightened up in fear. This was worse than I had thought. My brain screamed at me as my heart picked up, everything tensing until my muscles were rocks and my shoulders one solid mass. I needed to get out of here. I needed light. I said nothing as I leaned toward the torch again with my eyes refusing to leave hers. I was suddenly scared what she would do if I turned my back on her.
I was scared of her.
My hand reached blindly toward the torch, my fingers grazing garbage before finding the end of the pipe. That’s when her hand shot forward and wrapped around my wrist, holding me in place against the hard floor, her body right alongside mine.
“Don’t. Light. The. Fire.” Her hand tightened around my wrist, the hold painful as she began to pull me toward her.
“Sarah?” I asked, my voice shaking, before she pulled me to sitting. Her arm returned to her side and my hand moved right back to wrap around the bed rail I had laid across my lap.
I stared at her, trying to regulate my breathing, trying to convince myself not to run and not to attack, that she was safe. That she was only Sarah. She stared into me. Her gaze was hard and uncomfortable. I looked away, knowing I needed to run. My eyes fell on her wrists, the joints she was trying to hide from me. I could barely make them out from underneath her arms, the dark, black lines that circled the skin barely visible. They almost looked like scars from here.
“Sar
ah? What’s on your wrist?” I asked, my eyes widening as she unfolded her arms, her hand twisting as she looked at something I couldn’t quite make out in the darkness.
“Casualties of war, I suppose,” she said, her hard voice attempting to sound indifferent, but instead it sounded menacing, terrifying. “It’s what happens when you try to fight one when you don’t know what you are doing. You get cut.”
Cut.
Don’t trust a cut wrist.
“On your wrist?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“Yeah… on my wrist,” she snapped, her voice sounding more like a high-pitched hiss. “On both of them. They tried to kill me. What do you think is going to happen?”
“I thought you said they were gone?” I asked, everything in me tensing, straining against the ripple of fear that was moving over me.
“They are gone. These are old scars, see?” she pleaded as she shoved her arms toward me. The scars became more defined in the dark. My eyes adjusted the closer they were to me and then widened at the circles of scars around her wrists; the jagged edges of her skin, the droplets of black blood that still drizzled out of her.
“Then why are they still bleeding?”
Sarah said nothing, she only smiled.
Her smile expanded as her face kept stretching, the smile widening unnaturally as her teeth glimmered in the light.
“Blood!” she screamed, the words deep and hollow. The sound surged through me and I jumped. My back pressed against the shelving unit I had run into only moments before.
“Blood!” she screamed again, her body shifted to stand, the movement disjointed like someone had pulled a string that she had been attached to. Her body lifted up slowly while her shoulders rippled and her body expanded unnaturally until she towered over me.
“They are going to let me kill you. Sent me to kill you.” She smiled again, just as the screech of the Ulama hissed from her mouth. The sound was the deep, vibrating screech of death. Her eyes narrowed at me as she arched her back. The movement of her bones ridged as loud snaps echoed around the cavernous darkness. Her mouth opened wide like the maw of a cat as she screamed. The massive bat wings unfolded as they burst out of her skin, razor sharp feathers dripping with the deep black of her blood. The massive things hovered ominously in the air as they stretched out before me, trapping me in place.
Everything in me stiffened as I watched her. My face froze in fear and confusion. The screech of the Tar sounded again, seeping out of what was once my friend as the sharp points of the razor sharp feathers began to cut through her skin and clothes. Her skin darkened as her body fell away, leaving a monster behind.
I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t move. My hands clenched tightly around the rail I still held, the tip lifted as I prepared to strike. However my body would not respond to the desperate plea that surged through me. I sat still as I watched her change, as I watched her become a monster. I tried to understand what I was seeing, but I knew there was no way to understand. No explanation.
Don’t trust a cut wrist.
I couldn’t look away from Sarah’s face—the face that was now surrounded by jet black razor feathers, each one covered in the black of her blood. I stared into her dark blue eyes as she stared at me. Her breath heaved as the change completed itself. Her mouth opened and she screamed, the human sound I expected replaced by the call of death that I was so familiar with. It was loud in my head as it ricocheted through me.
“Death…” she hissed, her voice distorted beyond recognition, the screech of the Ulama taking over.
I had been so focused on her face, on the sound that seeped from her mouth, that I didn’t see it coming before it was almost too late. The golden talons that had replaced her fingers lifted above her head, the final blow one drop away from ending me.
The screech grew as my scream joined it. The fear that had gripped me finally released as my arms moved, the rail swinging ahead of me in an attempt to attack her, only to be intercepted by the long, golden talons, the metallic clang ringing through the empty space.
I barely held onto the rail, the impact threatening to send it to the ground. I gripped it tightly as I swung blindly, not waiting to see if my aim was right. The rail only made it half way to her before her arm swung wide, the talons coming toward me like five razor sharp knives. I jumped away in an attempt to avoid them, only to find my back pressed against shelving, the ridge of the backpack hard against my back.
I pressed myself against it, my eyes wandering as I tried to find a way to dodge her, a way to attack. Part of me screamed not to hurt her, that it was still her, that this was all a joke. It wasn’t, though. I could see that in the deathly black of her eyes.
She would kill me. I needed to kill her first. I let the shelf fall behind me before I lunged myself toward her, the rail held out like a spear. The pressure on my arm increased as the rail came in contact with the flesh of her abdomen and I stepped forward plunging it into her.
The creature screamed as the sound of ripping flesh filled the air, the screech high-pitched and pained as I lunged the bar into her. Everything inside of me tensed as I looked into Sarah’s face, her jaw wide as the scream left her, her eyes angry and pained. I knew I had to attack her, but now that I stood with my hands pressed against the flowing wound in her abdomen, I wasn’t sure that what I had done was the right decision. Regret was more than what she deserved, what the thing in front of me deserved. It didn’t matter. I felt it anyway.
I froze, letting the confusion and guilt wash over me, and in that one moment, the thing took her chance. The hard side of her arm pushed into me, a thousand knives cutting into my skin as it shoved me away. The wide arc of her arm sent me head long into the glass case that had been full of ice cream only a few years ago.
Glass shattered around me as I fell through the pane, the painful pressure in my head growing as my body heaved into the shelves. I felt the warmth of my blood as it flowed over my skin, the sharp sting of cuts and broken skin surrounding me.
I screamed at the impact, my body collapsing painfully together. I could hear the talons of the monsters feet as she came toward me, hear the screech increase as it approached. I needed to get up to get away before the monster could get to me, but I couldn’t move. Everything hurt as my head spun and throbbed, my limbs unwilling to answer my plea.
I swung myself to the side in desperation, heaving my body away. My hands hit the linoleum as I fell to the ground, a loud crash echoing around me as a golden talon slashed through the shelving I had just splayed against. My vision spun dangerously as I tried to see through the darkness, through the blood that was drizzling out of my head and into my eyes. My head felt heavy and light at the same time, something that I was sure signaled to a much bigger problem. Even through the pain, through the dizziness I knew I couldn’t stop moving.
The creature called again as it stood right next to me and I knew what was coming. I pushed my body hard in an attempt to get away from the monster, my head spinning as I army crawled over the broken glass that littered the floor.
The monsters legs were in front of me as it moved and howled; the long, black stems covered in hundreds of sharp little spines. I made my way toward the legs, knowing it was a foolish idea, but knowing I couldn’t run from this thing, not in the dark. My only choice was to fight and hope that another one didn’t come along to finish the job. I lunged at the monster’s legs, wrapping my arms around them and pulling with all my strength. I screamed as I heaved, my shoulders calling out in agony as I jerked the Ulama over onto its side.
I could hear the scream, but I barely registered it over the pain in my head, the sickening dizzy sensation making it hard to move.
I couldn’t fight like this. I needed to get out of here, yet I wasn’t sure how I could accomplish that when I could barely move, let alone see.
My breaths came in short little puffs as I tried to keep the moans inside of me. I moved on hands and knees as I tried to get toward the isle where I hoped the torch still la
y. I crawled as quickly as I could, my hands and knees slipping on garbage and broken glass. Everything kept bobbing and swimming before my eyes, the blackness fading in and out as I moved.
My hands dragged through the dirt as I crawled, the call of the monster behind me grew until I felt my body begin to weaken. I looked behind me at the sound only to see the thing regain its footing, the blackness of its body uncoiling to stand. I turned away, increasing my speed as I moved, searching through the debris around me in a mad attempt to find the rail, the torch, anything I could use as a weapon.
The tapping of its claws sounded loud and angry against the linoleum as it rushed toward me, preparing to attack. I was running out of time, I moved faster, searched faster, prayed that I would find a weapon soon. I would fight it off with my bare hands if I had to, but I knew that would do me no good.
My hand slid forward, sending me onto my belly in a hard impact. Another pained noise seeped out of my lips as I tried to regain my footing, the shift of weight putting my fingers in contact with cold metal just as two large feet moved in front of me.
I grabbed hold of the bed rail as one foot came up, the heavily scaled mass hitting me hard in the face and sending me backwards again. A million knives cut into my face and I screamed as my skin burned in agony. I fell hard against the floor, the loud smack of my already landing body echoed above the screech of the Tar.
I clung to the rail, my grip strong even though everything inside of me felt like it was dripping in pain. I yelled out as I watched the thing that was once Sarah move over me, her face all but gone now; only her eyes and the top of her nose were familiar anymore.
Through Glass Page 16
