I had no time to answer as Lucas used the whip to pull me to him, I collided into his chest and within seconds he had me pinned to the floor with the help of another man. He bound my arms behind my back and kicked me to the floor laughing, Albi too had been caught and tied up, he had been thrown on his back to the floor, he looked up at me with worried eyes but I just smiled. I wasn’t done yet!
The girl’s eyes widened as Lucas gave me the first blow his hand smashing against my skull then he stood and his foot connected hard in the same place and I felt the greying dizziness that happens when you hit your head too hard, I laughed at him, I laughed at him hard and deep and it was the sweetest sound to my ears even when he hit me again and again but still I did not falter, I did not pass out I just laughed harder. Blood sprang from my mouth as the laughter filled the air, pooling down my chin and slapping on the floor as my body heaved with more punches and kicks. Lucas shook with anger and grabbed me by my hair and pulled me up to his face, “You think you’re so funny bitch, why don’t you laugh over this”, and he arranged the whip around my neck and began to pull it, tightening it up around my neck. The stars blared in my vision along with the little black dots that danced but still I laughed at him.
“Stop it, Stop it”, the girl called out but Lucas was so overcome by his own fury he pulled tighter ignoring the pleas of the girl, then she spoke to me, “Why? Why are you letting him do this to you? Take him down, take him down now, use them!” It was as if she connected with something inside my brain as I felt a switch flick. The madness came in waves quick and fast, I had no control over it before it burst out of me. I let out a gargled roar and stood up with the whip still tightly tied around my neck, I turned to Lucas who said something but I heard nothing. With my hands bound he thought I would be useless but with an almost liquid of motions I had my hands untied and in front of me, letting out another roar I flicked out my claws and thrashed them over his face sending him flying and crashing into a wall at the far end. Snatching the whip I threw it to the floor and roared again, this time I felt it the power inside me, looking at Lucas who was now cowering and shouting orders to his people I took one step towards him, suddenly I felt a blade pierce my side sending out my arm I grabbed the offending person and pushed my claws into their torso before pulling them apart, guts, blood and other bodily fluid fell to the floor in wet slaps. The room blurred into nothing as people ran around screaming, shooting or trying to dice me with blades but like the hurricane I could become I tore them down in pools of their own blood.
“AHHHH”, I heard the girls scream and felt the blood lust appear, I didn’t want her but I wanted whoever was attacking her, they needed to die.
Turning I found Lucas had moved and now had the blade to the girls heart, the point digging into her chest, she screamed again before I felt the strange electrical wave, it was like a brick wall had slapped me in the face. Lucas flew up into the air and smashed into the ceiling, then he was thrown back down again with such force the tiles exploded around him. Everyone was silent for a moment before the screams started again, dust was floating all around the air from the tiles and the ceiling then I saw her, she forced the shackles that chained her to the walls from her body with the power discarding them to the side and smashing them into the face of an unsuspecting woman. The particles in the room floated all around her and I noticed where she stood time seemed to slow down with the particles not moving at all, she screamed and looked at one of the men he screamed holding his face as blood poured from his eyes, nose and mouth, he screamed until the blood clogging up his lungs and then he screamed no more.
“Contain her!” I heard Lucas command, he was slowly sitting up his nose broken and shards of tile impaled in one of his arms.
One of the women held a syringe and lunged for the girl who glared at her, the woman stopped in her tracks frozen on the spot, the girl took the syringe with her invisible arm and turned it facing the woman then she paused them both in mid-air, “No please don’t, please don’t”, the woman screamed, then without warning the woman flew forward but my brain saw it all in slow motion, the woman inched towards the syringe, the needle point coming ever closer to her eye, the tip hitting her pupil and slicing in then the concoction that was inside it forced into the screaming woman via her eye. The woman fitted on the spot before collapsing face down driving the needle home piercing her brain and killing her instantly.
The girl looked for him, for Lucas and she spotted him as he lifted his sword, “ARGH”, he cried running to her to drive his sword into her chest but she turned her head and using her eyes she forced him to kneel down in front of her, his sword scraping against the tiles as the metal blade bent under the force.
“Please my mighty goddess I meant no harm to you, I’m here to protect you”, he stammered.
The girl stared at him and took no notice of the shadows behind her where a man stood with a gun pointed at her head, I charged and jumped in front of her and pushing her out the way just as his finger pulled the trigger, the bullet impacted on my left shoulder and I cried out in pain before slicing him in half.
The girl turned to me pure shock and relief on her face, she turned round to just see Lucas and some others run from the room, she screamed out in fury and the ones who weren’t dead yet or made a run for it after Lucas fell to the floor dead, their mouths opened in a silent scream. The girl could stand no more and collapsed to the floor but I didn’t care, not now.
I couldn’t help it, the smell of the blood in the air, the irony taste that danced over my tongue was too much, the blood lust took over and I placed my hands in the cooling blood of the man I had just sliced apart and bit into his warm flesh, the blood dripped down my throat and cascaded down into my stomach, my mind fluttered with the feeling of satisfaction as the blood pumped through my veins. My hands shovelled in more of the flesh, the man’s blood covering my face and hands in a thick film of plasma.
“Stacie?”
It was Monique but she was too far in the distance for me to hear her, my mind was all about the food in front of me.
~
Monique looked on at her long lost friend as she devoured a hole chunk of a human being, yes the man had been part of a cult and tried to kill them all but this wasn’t right, the look of satisfaction written over her face was stomach churning, the sucking noises as she drank the blood from his veins, the constant chewing of the flesh. Monique couldn’t hold it in any longer and threw up, the hot sickly feeling of the vomit as it left her lips made her gag more until she ran dry.
Turning she looked at her friend, “Stacie?” but her friend was no longer home.
“She will come back to us, she just needs time”, the girl spoke up from the other side of the room, she was still on the floor barely awake, her breathing shallow, her voice weak and strange.
Monique looked the girl over she couldn’t be any more than 14, her dark hair was dripping with sweat and blood, her haunted eyes looked tired. The albino man rushed to her and she told him she was ok but he lifted her into his arms anyway.
“What about the others?” he said to her.
“We will see them again I’m sure but for now we need to rest”.
“Rest? How can we rest we have…her eating a man and could eat one of us next, we have cult loonies on the run in a huge shopping centre that could be anywhere and I have a baby back at camp that desperately needs milk”, Monique cried out.
“You have a baby now?”
Monique’s head span as Stacie looked over at her, blood dripped from her jaws but she spoke like it was just normal old Stacie.
“No not mine another camp mate, but he needs the milk, now”.
“Well let’s get you home”, Stacie said standing up, chunks of uneaten flesh dropped from her clothes to the floor.
“I’m sorry Stacie but I am not going anywhere with you”.
Stacie showed almost no emotion as she came over and untied Monique from the chair before saying, “Sure whatever”, then she s
kulked off to the door and rammed it shut moving some of the pews in front of it.
“What are you doing?” Monique asked.
“We either leave or we rest, up to you”.
Monique bit her lip, she was a sucker for babies and kids, “Fine we go but I’m driving”.
“Are you well enough to drive?” she asked.
Monique shivered from the fever that ached through her body, “I have to be I’m not letting you drive”.
“Monique it’s me”.
“No it’s not you, this is someone I don’t know”, she said backing away.
“I can drive”, Albi stated.
“Fine its settled Albi will drive”, Stacie said.
“And what about you”, she asked.
“I will ride in the truck bed, I presume that was your truck outside that the cult brought in as it looks like yours”.
“How do you know what I drive?”
Stacie looked down at her feet, “Where do you think I’ve been for the past five years?”
“Wait, what? You’ve been watching us this whole time?”
Stacie nodded, “I had to make sure you were all safe, Ollie…Cain!”
“Why didn’t you come to us?”
“What? With me like this, yeah hi guys I’m back from the dead but be careful I get hungry occasionally”, she laughed that strange eerie laugh again, it sent shivers down Monique’s spine, “I stayed away to keep you all safe from me but I stayed close enough to help if you needed it”, Stacie’s hands went up to a wound that was bleeding above her left eye but within seconds it was clotting and slowly but surely knitting itself back together along with the slice in her side.
“What about your pets?” she asked.
“The Crushers?”
Monique nodded.
“I sent them away”.
A cough interrupted them, “I think we should rest before leaving”, Albi butted in on the reunion conversation, “It’s dark and a blizzard storm out there, we won’t be able to see a thing. Plus she needs the rest”.
They all looked to the young girl who was now fast asleep on one of the pews, a blanket draped over her shoulders.
They barricaded the doors fully with other pieces of furniture to keep the cult leaders out, although Stacie said she could sense them and they were nowhere near the room they all huddled in now. Monique couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by finding Stacie, not in a way that meant she didn’t love her as her friend because she did but her being back was stirring some weird emotions and now the whole eating a human thing. Plus there was Callum, what would he think? Would he no longer love her now Stacie was back on the scene? He had cried for her for many years, he still dreamt of her and called to her in his sleep, would he leave her for the monster? Monique couldn’t think like that, Stacie had only just turned up and maybe the reaction back at camp might not be what she would expect, the whole happy reunion maybe they wouldn’t want her back anyway…Maybe?
The albino man had set a small fire in the centre of the room, the old windows at the back wall had been opened wide to ventilate the room of dangerous gases but it was enough to cook some food over which had been stock piled in the room to appease the gods by the cult. A few hours passed and the girl soon awoke and they all sat around the fire, she blinked and stared into nothingness, Monique couldn’t understand the girl just like she couldn’t understand Stacie, where had that power come from?
“Excuse me, what’s your name?” Monique asked the girl.
The girl turned and smiled a friendly warm smile but it was too old for her eyes, it was a haunted smiled, “Kaley, my names Kaley”.
“Hi Kaley, I’m Monique…I just wanted to ask about your…gift…How?” she shook her head in dismay as she said it, “How do you do it?”
Kaley looked at her shoes which were an rather beaten up pair of trainers, “I’m infected, just like Stacie and Albi, I got bitten but it didn’t turn me”, she pulled a face at herself, “It must have mutated inside me and manifested as this… gift”.
“You’re infected? You mean I’m the only human person in this room, your all infected?”
“Just because we are infected doesn’t mean we aren’t still human”, Albi stated but Stacie caught her eye, the look would normally be enough to chill someone’s bones but to her it was a please don’t go there look.
“So what happened? How did you find out about it?” she asked.
The girl shrugged, “I was staying at my aunt’s house while my parents were at work she lived in a small village near here somewhere, we were down the park when the acid rain hit. It killed my little brother and my aunt out right, they practically melted into puddles but didn’t turn, luckily for them. But I had been playing under a slide which had a wooden roof and seat underneath. I heard the screams and watched everyone melt away, I cried for hours wishing for my mum and dad to come and save me but no one came, no one other than crazy old Meredith from my aunt’s block of flats, she staggered in the puddles and howled out for my blood. I was so young and frightened that when she grabbed me I didn’t try and run not until she bit me”, she paused and showed us her neck, a rather pink scar in the shape of a full set of teeth sat unmoving, “I shoved her away and ran, I ran as far as I could until the shock and blood loss set in, I collapsed outside a vets which was actually the only bit of luck I had. The man Dale who was inside came out and took me in, cleaned all my wounds and stitched me up, back then we didn’t know the virus spread through biting as he didn’t venture out and I was too young to care, we thought it was only the rain that turned you but I didn’t turn and when we found out that was how people turned we knew something was different with me”.
The room was silent as everyone listened to this girl retell her tale.
“Then one day we were attacked and I screamed and the monster flew away from me hitting a brick wall and dying, that’s when he knew I was special. He vowed to always look after me. Then we got caught by Lucas, we were raiding a shop when they all turned up outside, they took him first which made me angry and scared, I used my power on them but I was still too weak but Lucas saw the potential. He brought us here and cleared it out of creatures, he then had drug fuelled dreams of how I was a gift sent from god but really I was just an infected girl with a power”.
“With Telekinesis”, Albi added.
She nodded, “Yes Telekinesis”.
“Can you move a lot?”
She shook her head, “Not yet but every time I use it my power grows, like today I’ve never used it that much before I always flake out well before that, it tires me out so much to the point I just collapse after using it”.
“So what did Lucas want with it?” Stacie asked, she now had a small bowl of bottled water which she was using to wipe the excess blood away from her mouth making her look a little more human than creature.
“He wanted to use it to crush rival groups, he wanted me to grow my power so I could take out larger groups so we could steal their supplies, take their weapons and so he could take their women”.
They all just looked at one another for a moment, “Have you ever done what he asked?” Stacie said looking concerned.
“Once, a couple came into the shopping centre, they were expecting a baby and they had also come looking for baby milk and other things, Lucas caught them and demanded I kill them to teach them a lesson. I had to do it, I had to do something, so I made them unconscious. I concentrated so hard to make it look like they were dead but still I kept their hearts beating but I passed out before I knew what they done with them. My friend, Dale the man who took me from here told me that they dumped them outside to be eaten by creatures but that my power wore off and they woke up and fled but…”
“You don’t think they made it?” Stacie asked.
She shook her head, “No I don’t, Lucas and his men were killers but I guess I hope they made it but I’m realistic now”.
“Did Lucas ever hurt you? Or…” Monique trailed off.
Kaley smiled softly, “No, lucky for me I was god’s gift and no one could touch me, I was off limits because if my blood became tainted then the gods would take away my power and then they would have no special attack against rival clans. Lucas was rather superstitious like that”.
“To be superstitious in this world, now that is funny”, Stacie said with sarcasm, Monique glanced at her old friend and sighed at how much she had changed but then hadn’t they all? How would Stacie react knowing she was now with Callum, after all they went through? Or maybe she already knew?
Kaley smiled, “He is a rather strange man, he believes that the devil is really god testing us to see who we really believe is who. He raves on that past Christian’s bled dry the name of Christ which was actually the devils son but he doesn’t make sense because he believes the devil is god, which would make Christ gods son but he is so high most of the time nothing he says make sense”.
The conversation went on most of the night until Monique couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, she felt slightly poorly and she knew it was from being in the cold water for so long, a rest would do her some good. Morning came and the sun glowed over the snow outside, looking out the window Monique could see how the blizzard had hit hard last night. In the pit of her stomach she worried about baby Charlie but also about Ollie and Callum, once they had come back from their trip to check out the fires she knew that surely they would come looking for her seen as she had made no appearance last night. Standing up she told the others it was time to leave but she noticed Stacie wasn’t there. Looking at the door she noticed how it was slightly ajar but the barricade still in the way enough that Lucas would have to make a noise to get in.
Alone (Book 2): Lone Page 9
