BRAINS: with a side-order of Flesh., Siagrrl [best e reader for epub TXT] 📗

Chapter 3 - First Impressions. [Updated]

 

“Hey – wait. What’s that? Over there.” Dee whispered.

More incredibly helpful directions from the genius that is Delevan Kade. He was pointing in the direction I had been facing for the past 10 minutes, or so it seemed. At the thing I had been staring at.

Sure enough, even in the middle of the night with no stars out, a figure was visibly standing over something in the middle of the court.

“Hey! You’re right, Dee! There is something there!” I gasped, rolling my eyes - which he couldn't see of course.

“Actually the more I look at it, the more I think it’s a ‘someone,’ and a female someone, at that.” Boy, he sure was on a roll, tonight!

The figure was too small and petite to by a male – but too big to be an animal. I could tell ‘She’ was swaying just the littlest bit, but she was just a little bit too far away to tell if she was facing us or not. Getting curiouser and curiouser I found myself walking closer to the fence that bordered theschool grounds and the netball courts. Upon reaching the fence, I turned back towards Dee. He'd remained where he was.

He looked even more scared right now, than he had when he was in the school. Chicken.

With a shrug I faced the fence again. Gasped and stepped back. She wasn't in the middle of the curt anymore. She was right infront of me - still swaying. We were inches from each other seperate only by the wiry metal fence that divided the football oval from the tennis courts.

She was about 5’7 and was wearing our school uniform. Her hair was a matted and wet, chocolate brown and shoulder length. I couldn't see her face under her hair, but she looked oddly pale, almost luminescent. It might have been my eyes but her left arm appeared to be twisted at an unusual angle. Then I heard it.

A soft popping sound.

As if she was rolling around on a mat of bubble-wrap.

So much about this didn't make any sense. It was almost midnight and she was still here? Why?

What was that sound?

How did she get so close, so fast and so quietly?

‘Hmm…’ I thought aloud. The popping sounds stopped. As did the swaying.

She looked up and into my face, the moonlit bouncing off her cornea.

Her large red pupils surrounded by a black iris.

"Whoa!" I gasped stepping back. They glowed under the light of the moon. That couldn’t be right. They must be contacts. I called out to compliment her.

“Hey, cool contacts”, but got as far as “Hey-”, at which point in time she smiled, a big toothy grin.

A thick mushy substance dripped from between her teeth. Her teeth and gums stained an ominous crimson. The complete look was terrifying. I couldn’t help but feel confused and wonder, if it was all some elaborate prank? The school, the windows - which I realised had been boarded up both inside and out - and complete darkness the school had been submerged in, my being left here . . . and now, this girl?

I heard Dee call out to me in urgency, but I was too fucussed on this girl to listen.

Is her mouth supposed to be full of gleaming razor sharp incisors, like that?

Did Halloween arrive while I was unconscious?

Was my accident so bad, that I'm now unconcious in a hospital and having some crazy dreams from the drip I'm on?

Are the meds making me hallucinate?

In that human flesh, I spy between her teeth?!

Before I had time to voice my oh-so-important thoughts, a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind and bI was spun around.

“Run!” Delevan yelled into my face.

Without another word, we were bolting back the way we came. I gambled a glance back to see the girl charge at the wire fence, knock it down with a single blow and come full speed at us like a bullet train. She was hot on our heels. I flicked my eyes back to the dark area she had been standing over before I managed to get too far away again, and the inner suspicions I had had were correct. Another girl lie in the tennis courts, staring at me with dead eyes. Her mangled body silent and torn. Missing fingers. A smashed kneecap. Numerous cuts and slashes across her torso. A small pool of blood had dyed the granite floor beneath her. The area where her neck should have been, completely gone.

Aside from the wind whipping my hair, I heard the girl start shrieking behind us. It sounded like a cross between a dying cat and the high key of a piano.

“Quick!” Delevan shouted. “Back inside!” We closed in on the window we had originally come through and jumped through the still open window, landing face first on the canteen floor. My right leg twitched and I was reminded of the pain once more.

“Hurry, Dee! Close the window!” Delevan scrambled to his feet and jumped at the window, pulling the glass panel down and securing the latches on either side, literally seconds before the shrieking red-eyed girl reached the window and proceeded to bang her fists and forehead against it. Dee spun around and bolted into the darkness.

I knew we had to act quickly, but watching this crazy girl with her flesh fetish had me mesmerised. With the limited funding our school recieved and utterly cheap contractors with about as much idea what a hammer was as Dee had, that window wasn’t going to last long. 

A small blood splatter out of the corner of my eye brought me back. “What's her problem?!” I wheezed – still trying to catch my breath. I sat up and clutched my wound trying to stop the blood flow. The impact had caused fresh blood to spill out over the bandages. There was a split silence and I noticed her staring at my leg. Her eyes changed. Her red glowing pupil split into three - count that, three - glowing red pupils in a triangular formation. The whites of her eyes now completely black, she shrieked again, her mouth open from ear to ear. She pounded on the glass again, more frenzied. A tiny crack appeared.

Delevan burst into view seconds later with a large plank of wood adorned with long bent screws, in one hand and a shovel in the other.

“What are you doing!? You can't hit her!!” I howled at him.

“You got a better idea, Ms Genius? I'd sure appreciate it right now!” I noticed he was shaking, he was scared.

It was as if she could hear us through the glass. The second she was referred to she started pounding harder and shrieking louder. I noticed the fracture slowly becoming a crack. Running wasn't an option at this point, with how fast she caught up with us, and in my position, I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, and I sure as heck wasn't going to be fast.

“Your crazy?!”

"She's going to kill us, Ale!"

“Maybe she’s crazy!”

"No, she's dead!"

I couldn’t help but think there was some truth in what he said. I took another look at her which didn’t help the case any. The light of the moon accentuated her features and made it very clear that humans are not supposed to look like that.

Everything about her in general was grey and faded.

Except her eyes.

“Those…aren’t contacts, are they?” I squeeked.

Dee gave me a sad smile. “Alexis, I really don —”

The window smashed.

Shards of glass flew in every direction. Most managed to miss me, I noticed. Delevan - being closer to the window than myself - yelped and dropped his weapons, clutching his left hand. A few spots of blood fell to the floor.

“Uh-oh.”

The shrieking girl – person – thing – crashed her way through what remained of the glass and barrelled towards him.

“Rrraaaaaaiiiiiiihhhhhhh!!”

I shuffled backwards on my rump and using the side of a canteen table for support pulled myself to my feet.

“Delevan, look out!”

He looked up in time to see the rabid human-looking girl charge at him. She jumped him, grabbing fistfuls of his hair knocking him to the ground.

“Aaaaaahh!! You crazy bitch! Get offa me!”

Either weapon still out of reach, Delevan frantically tried to keep her back with his good hand. "She's going ape-shit, Ale! Do something!"

Her eyes were wild and filled with what was noticeably bloodlust. Or maybe it was flesh-lust. Not really clear on the differences.

She screamed and hollered, letting go of his hair just to bash at his face with her closed fists which just looked like a blur-motion. She kept lowering her head to his face, as if she wanted to take a bite out of him. But as stupid as that sounds, right now, anything is possible.

Her fingers, now long and thin like sharpened blades clawed at his face and neck, Dee was doing all he could to block them with one hand. A deep gash formed on Dee's face causing him to cry out, blood poured from the open wound like water from a sponge. The world suddenly slowed down, and her punches became more visible.

I have to do something. I thought. NOW!

Putting my body on autopilot, I watched through alien eyes as something came over me and I dived for the shovel being the closer of the two. Still affixed to Dee, the girl didn't notice or just didn't care about my advances and, shovel in hand I lept at her.

I swung as hard and fast, at her head as I could manage, and it hit her square in the back of the skull with a hearty thwack!

As fast as lightning her neck snapped around and she snarled at me, her head doing a complete 180. She gave me a mouth-closed-eyes-twinkling-cheekbones-up-smile.

My temporary, completely adrenaline fueled bravery almost shattered.

Almost.

I swung again. Hard.

The shovel collided with her head, mid-shriek with a sickening thwack, catching her jaw and almost ripping it from its hinges. And I swung again.

Her head snapped back this time, her neck clearly broken, but she still fought. Reaching up with her right hand grasped the shovel before I swung a fourth time and yanked me to my knees. Her left arm came up out of nowhere as if she were about to do a backflip and caught my wrist. It made a few popping sounds. It's dislocated!

Her grip wasn't near as strong in her left as it was in the right. I jerked back my arm, grabbed her wrist and yanked it backwards. Popping sounds galor. Now on my back I kicked her in the small of her back still holding her arm. Still not enough swung my good leg around and caught her left ankle tripping her forward. Thanks to gravity, and her already sliced and dislocated arm, the ligaments tore, the muscles gave way and before I knew it, I'd ripped her arm off.

Dee scooting out of the way moments before she hit the floor.

Her attention completely on me now, she howled, came up and pounced at me, I kicked again catching her in her mangled neck and she flew backwards landing a few feet away. She landed on her back, the tibia of her left leg now protruding out from under her pale skin.

That's not right. That should've killed her.

The bloodloss. The physical trauma. The fact that her neck was broken and her head was facing the wrong way.

She pulled herself up to a sitting position before trying to get back up.

I should stop, right?

I should’ve stopped.

Right?

On the edge of the passenger side seat of my consciousness, I charged at what remained of the girl again, raising the shovel over my head like a maniac.

Bringing it straight down, the