Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology)

by Chrissy Peebles

  “When did you get so smart?” I teased, but I thought I saw his cheeks redden a bit.

  “I watch a lot of television, Cassie.”

  He walked over to the side of the room as if he was trying to determine where the best place to lay down would be. I stood beside Ted and watched him as he lay down on the floor and then flipped around a few times. Standing back up, he was still looking all around the room, but he shook his head.

  “That will have to do; I think anywhere we sleep on this floor will be uncomfortable.” The look he gave me was almost apologetic. He walked over and pulled a tarp down off the only shelf in the room. He folded it a few times and put it on the ground where he had been lying.

  “Cassie, you sleep here.” He threw down a box, from the corner of the room, and flattened it with his feet. “Ted, you sleep here. I’ll take the first shift.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Ted was being sarcastic but he went over and stretched out with his head on the piece of cardboard.

  I decided there was no use arguing; besides, I was tired. I put my head on the tarp and tried to get comfortable. I thought it was really sweet of Brett to make me a pillow.

  I watched Brett go set up his post in front of the entrance. He laid the two-by- four across his lap and sat straight up. I turned my back to him and stretched my legs out on the hard concrete floor. I silently hoped there were no more spiders around like my friend from earlier.

  He was such a nice guy. I un-balled the fist I had been making since I ran from the bathroom. I examined my index finger and saw the small line of blood. Ms. Hamrick had definitely nicked me with her teeth. That’s not good, I thought, as I examined the cut; it wasn’t clotting, and even though it was tiny, it hurt something awful.

  I kept my finger wound to myself. Surely, you would need a full- fledged bite from one of those people to turn into them. I thought that I had it all figured out. I finally let my eyes flutter closed, careful to tuck my finger underneath the tarp. I would have to lie if they asked how it happened. Aside from a little nausea and an overwhelming fear of what might happen, I felt fine.

  I drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 6

  Trapped

  I looked at my watch when I woke up, noticing my body was stiff. It was a little after three in the morning. After I woke up, it had taken me a couple of minutes to realize where I was. The panic I felt was starting to subside as the events of the day came rushing back to me.

  I looked over to see Brett still sitting by the entrance to our hideaway. His head was nodding a bit, indicating to me that he was ready to switch guards. I looked over at Ted, who was curled up asleep on his cardboard box. The snoring coming from him gave the appearance that he was in a pretty deep sleep.

  I sat up and stretched my aching muscles. Clearing my throat to get his attention, I stood up.

  “Brett, you ready to take a break?”

  He smiled over at me and stood up, letting his board fall to the floor. Ted jumped up and mumbled something incoherent before settling back down to snore some more. I walked over to Brett, curious if he had heard anything.

  “Was it pretty quiet out there?” We were standing close together and I resisted the urge to reach out and touch his chest. Even as tired as he was, he still looked amazing.

  “I have been hearing them out there walking around. It sounds to me like they are dragging their arms down the lockers. If they get close enough to the door, you can hear them moaning.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Wake me up if they try to get in or you get scared, all right?”

  Between the smile that he gave me and his hand touching my shoulder, I had to sit down.

  “Okay, thanks Brett.” I took my position beside the entrance and got ready for a long night.

  He went over and stretched out on the tarp. His soft snoring filled the room in seconds. I examined my finger again; the wound was not getting any better. I thought it actually looked a little worse, which was concerning. Great, it’s probably infected.

  This thought had me picturing my finger falling off before I could get any disinfectant.

  The first hour was relatively quiet. Every once in a while a single moan would break through the snores. I spent some of my time watching Brett sleep, even though it made me feel like a creeper. Watching his chest rise and fall gave me a peaceful feeling.

  I heard someone knocking on the front door of the school. Had they come to rescue us? I was pretty sure that no one knew where we were. I waited to see if they would knock again, and they didn’t. Just when I had gotten used to the quiet, the knock came again, and it was louder. I almost jumped out of my skin.

  Brett was too tired to hear the knocking, but Ted woke up.

  “What was that?” Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and looked at me.

  “I don’t know, it sounds like someone is knocking on the front door of the school.” I stood up and leaned the board against the wall, shrugging.

  “Rescuers,” His eyes got wide and he rushed to me, trying to pull the entrance open.

  “Wait.” I was alarmed at his haste. “We should think about this. I can hear them out there, and the knocking could be one of them.” I was thinking of earlier when there were hundreds of them shuffling around. What if they were still out there? What if they knew we were in here?

  “Cassie, we have to let whoever it is know we are here, or we may never get out of this room.” He was right, but I still didn’t think it was a good idea. “You can stay in the closet while I go out and check.” He looked at me to see if that would suit me.

  “Shouldn’t we wake up Brett?” I gestured to his sleeping form, turning my head questioningly.

  “Not yet, let’s see if it is actually help. If it isn’t someone to help us, then letting him sleep will be more beneficial to us.”

  I don’t know why I went along with his plan. Maybe it was lack of sleep or just the desire to get out of our hideout, but I nodded and agreed with him.

  Ted pulled off the entrance cover and slid into the closet. I followed close behind him, shaking with fear of the unknown. When he walked up and slowly opened the door, it was quiet. As I watched him move down the hall, I didn’t see any gray-skinned people lurking about.

  “Be careful.” I had a bad feeling about this, but I let him go. I watched him go around the corner to the front door and crossed both my fingers. It seemed like I waited forever before I heard someone screaming. It didn’t sound like Ted, but I didn’t really know what his screaming sounded like. In a rush of adrenaline, I ran out into the hallway to see what was going on. I realized too late, I had left my two-by-four by the door of the entrance.

  I was out of my cover now so I reluctantly walked down the hall towards the screaming. When I got around the corner, the first thing I saw was a flashlight, and it was lying on the ground pointing towards me. The light was on and since I couldn’t see in the dark, I picked it up.

  My hands were shaking as I turned it around and the light spread out in front of me. It moved across a pair of shoes, and then slowly up the length of a body. The body wasn’t alone, as there were three people chewing on it.

  It wasn’t Ted, and I could only assume it was the person who had been knocking. Ted was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t need to stick around any longer. Clutching the flashlight, I took off running back towards the closet.

  In my haste to get there, my feet got tangled and I tripped and hit the floor hard. I slid a little ways until someone’s foot stopped me. Swallowing a gulp, I moved the flashlight so I could see the face belonging to the shoe.

  “Mr. Burns?” It was the P.E. teacher, but he looked a lot different. His clothes were torn, he was covered in blood, and he had a scary look in his eyes.

  Bending down to look at me, he made a groaning noise. The smell was hard to take and I could only assume it was rotting flesh. It was putrid and reminded me of the garbage dumpsters outside of our neighborhood.

  Something strange happened at t
his point. Mr. Burns smelled the air near me like he was taking in my scent. Standing back up, he groaned at me again and began to shuffle along, away from me. I laid still for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had happened, when it dawned on me that I needed to get back to the hideaway.

  I jumped up and took off running back to the closet.

  Chapter 7

  Where’s Ted?

  I practically collided with Brett when I got back into the closet. He looked at the flashlight in my hand and I realized I was shining it directly into his eyes. I jerked it down by my side, and mumbled my apologies. “Sorry about that.”

  “Where’s Ted?” He grabbed my arm lightly, as concern for his friend filled his voice.

  “I didn’t see him. I went out to find him, but I saw some of them. They were eating another person; it wasn’t Ted, I checked.”

  “Why did you two leave me in there? What could you have possibly been thinking?” He was upset, and he should have been; we had been careless. The consequences of our hasty action meant that we now did not know where Ted was.

  I told him all about the knocking, and creeping out the door. I told him about the screaming and Mr. Burns. I conveniently left out the part where Mr. Burns didn’t try to eat me, even though he had the opportunity. He listened and then moved towards the closet door.

  I grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

  “I am going to look for Ted; we can’t just leave him out there to fall down to whatever the hell those things are. I will be safe and you can go back into the hole and wait for us.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I knew I didn’t want him out there by himself, but I also didn’t want to face more of the half-dead people lumbering around out there. I opted to go back into the hole and wait for him, hoping that he would be okay. I paced around the little room waiting for him to come back, hoping that he could retrieve Ted before anything bad happened to him.

  I was feeling very woozy and thought maybe I should lie down for a minute. I was hoping that I was just stressed from the recent events and the sick feeling didn’t have anything to do with the bite mark on my finger.

  It was quickly getting worse and spreading so there was no way I was going to be able to hide it from Brett and Ted for that much longer. I felt hungry and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the early morning breakfast I crammed down on the way to school.

  I stretched back out on the tarp, thinking of how weird the day had been, and how the future was so uncertain. I fell into a deep dreamless sleep and was only awakened when Brett shook me.

  “Cassie, wake up.” He stood back up, over me, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

  I noticed that Ted was not with him, and he looked defeated as he sat down on the floor beside me. I crawled over to wrap my arms around him, and he looked surprised at first, but then he put his arm around me and we were silent for a little while.

  “We are going to have to move soon.” Brett was speaking quietly as he rubbed my arm. “He knows where we are, so when he wakes up, he may come for us. I was too late to help him.”

  I did not know how long Brett had been gone, but I assumed by his tone that he had found his friend in very bad shape. It scared me that, if he turned into one of them, he would know where we were. I sighed, as I leaned my head on Brett’s shoulder.

  Something struck me as odd, as I inhaled his scent. I thought that he smelled tasty. My mouth started to water, and I pictured myself biting him. The thought was followed with panic at what the hell was going on in my mind. How was I already hungry for human flesh; it hadn’t been that long ago when she had bitten me.

  Tasty! I was alarmed. He smelled good, but tasty was not something that should describe my crush. Something bad was happening to me, and I could keep trying to fight it, but as I glanced at my finger, I knew in the back of my mind it was only going to get worse.

  He was looking at me while I was having all these thoughts, and he was too close for comfort. He smiled, as he took my face in his hands, and brought his lips to mine. It was everything I had hoped for in our first kiss. There were fireworks, and my whole body felt alive. I allowed him to ease me down onto the tarp and welcomed his body weight on top of me. This felt right and I wanted him all over me just like this. I had dreamed of this moment countless times and it was finally happening.

  Our kisses became more urgent, and he moved one hand down to slide up my shirt. I heard a low growl come from somewhere within me. Something wasn’t right. It happened very quickly, but before I knew it, I had reared back and bitten into his chin hard. He cried out in severe pain, and tried to push me off of him, but I was latched on. I felt the skin break in my mouth, and felt my hunger as I ripped the skin away from his face. When I realized what I had done, I was horrified.

  I stood back thinking of how I could remedy the situation. He sat there with blood pouring from his face and a hurt look in his eyes. All I could think was one word: tasty. I had to get out of there. What the hell had I done? How many times had I pictured my lips near his, and I manage to get them there by biting his face off? I had to get as far away from him as possible. I ran out the entrance and into the school hall. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I contemplated where to go. I was changing into one of those monsters. I still didn’t feel much different. Nothing was hurting but my finger, but I had launched at him like an animal, and I had enjoyed it. That wasn’t normal.

  I had literally bitten my crush’s face off!

  I rushed out into the parking lot, looking around. The sun was rising quickly and I could see clearly what was going on around me. There were several people lumbering around, looking in cars and picking through body scraps for a good bite. I could hear screaming in the distance and it was making me hungry. I came up to a girl, sitting in her car, crying. I recognized her from class, and she was hurt.

  I could see the bite marks on her upper arm and it looked like she had been knocked into something. There was a large gash in her thigh and the smell was thick in the air.

  The blood was oozing from her leg and she looked up at me, terrified of what I was about to do. I was so hungry, and she wasn’t changed yet. I don’t know how I knew this, but I growled as I went to pull at her driver’s side door.

  Chapter 8

  I Don’t Want This

  Something snapped inside of me and I just let her go.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her as I walked off, “I’m not myself today, but get out of here, because those other guys will eat you.” I didn’t turn around when I heard her scream and the crunch of bones filled the air. Warning her did no good, she was injured and they could smell her blood for miles around. I still didn’t feel any different.

  I walked off towards the center of my small town, Eerie, NC. I was following a small group of lumbering gray people that seemed to have a destination in mind. The irony of the name of the town was not lost on me. I tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened; surely I hadn’t tried to eat that girl, which would be sick. Something unnatural was happening to me, and I had to find someone that could help me with it. The people I was following seemed further along in there transformation, or whatever it was. They had graying skin with patches of black; most of them moaned. It alarmed me that I didn’t even interest them with my still milky white skin.

  I walked on, for what seemed like hours, until I came to the edge of town and could see the hardware store just up ahead. Our town really didn’t have anything in it besides a high school, a movie theater, and a few shops. You had to drive thirty minutes to get to a big store and most people didn’t feel like it was worth the drive. The door to the hardware store was open and I could hear the TV on inside. I was hoping that the news would give me some type of direction.

  “What started as an isolated incident in a small town northwest of Maine is quickly becoming an epidemic. The people, who are being infected with a disease passed by saliva, are becoming more unstable by the hour. There are reports all over the country of neighbors stoppin
g by for a cup of sugar, and taking a bite out of the person holding it.”

  The news reporter chuckled at his joke, which I didn’t find funny. He seemed to straighten himself out and continued reporting the story.

  “For lack of a better term, those who are building up a resistance are calling the affliction “zombified.” If you are in a town that has not been affected yet, find your closest safety camp and sit tight. If you are in the middle of these sick, soulless bastards, then God save you. Reporting live, this has been Zane Davis, Channel Two News.”

  He had told me what I had already known. I knew that people were eating other people, and I knew, to some extent, that it was spread through saliva. All I could hope was I had so little of the disease inside of me that my body would fight it.

  I was about to leave when I thought I heard someone mumbling in the back of the store. I walked slowly toward the sound to see what was happening. The tools had all been knocked off the shelves, and the store was a real wreck. I wondered how many of the walking dead had been through here at one time.

  A blond head of hair came into view and it was attached to a plump woman holding a shovel. The shovel had a small amount of blood on it, and it was shaking vigorously, along with her body. There was some blood on her jeans, right below her left thigh, and her clothes were dirty. She was repeating the same thing over and over again.

  “I don’t want to eat you; I don’t want to eat you; I don’t want to eat you.”

  I cleared my throat and startled her so badly that she dropped the shovel. She turned around and looked at me. I thought she looked more embarrassed than anything else.

  “It’s okay, I’m normal.” Kind of, I thought. I held my hands up and noticed she honed right in on my finger and I saw her eyes widen. She was a pretty lady, through all the dirt and blood, and her eyes were still heavily lined with blue eyeliner that matched her blue blouse.

  “I wasn’t going to eat her,” she was quick to point out, looking like the cat that ate the canary. “At least, I was trying not to,” she mumbled.