by T. Rudacille
***
How people could live in such a state of delusion was beyond even my vast understanding of the human condition. I waited throughout the duration of the next day, feeling the storm on the horizon before it literally and figuratively broke over us. There was a rumbling in the suddenly overcast sky; it was a symbol from the heavens that trouble was brewing.
At six PM, Earth-time, lightning began to streak fantastically across the sky. People gazed up, dumfounded at the show of light just above our heads. In brilliant patterns, the lightning struck, leaving black holes in the clouds that quickly filled back over like a scab forming over a gaping wound. A beautifully scented rain descended on us.
People scrambled to get into their tents, but I stood on the moistening ground, staring up.
Alright, heavens. Message received. I thought to myself.
Even Elijah, the realist, was beginning to show signs of worry. Maura was beside herself. In a foolish display of trust in Maura's fragile emotions, my father had relayed all that had been said between us and the man who had come. Now she was clutching Penny in her arms and keeping a firm grasp on Violet's hand.
Others were cloaked in feigned ignorance. However well they hid their growing trepidation, I saw in their minds that they knew something monumentally dangerous was stirring in the cover of those trees. I watched several people stop their meandering activities during the day to stare blankly off into the darkness as they assessed a threat that they could not yet see. No matter, it would present itself before the night was over.
My father was perhaps the only one sure that nothing was going to occur. He pranced around like a show-horse, reminding me of his wife who had behaved with the same irritatingly fake brashness every time an election was near. He spoke to people candidly, explaining away his brutish actions and actually convincing a few of the survivors who were less able to think independently that their safety was his top priority. Those woeful individuals possessed a humanity that could be sold in exchange for their peace of mind. People were going to starve to death, but perhaps their faith in our morally corrupt leader would save them in the end.
Fools. He would trade the lambs that followed closely behind him, the shepherd, because they would go willingly. The ones that fought their slaughter would perhaps meet their ends brutally, but at least they would had fought.
I was neither the obedient nor the fighting lamb, for I was not a lamb at all. I was the wolf hunting the flock. I was looking for the weakest links to sacrifice to the butcher and his comrades that hid in the darkness of the trees. I had no grounds to call anyone on their lack of humanity, because my own was being called into question. My own self-preservation instinct was beginning to supersede my belief that we all needed to pull together. If it came down to either me or one of the faceless survivors being taken, I would willingly devour them in order to escape. I would kill anyone I had to if that was what it took to protect Violet, Penny, Elijah, and myself.
Please note that I took no pleasure in such a depraved selfishness. I expect and will accept punishment from a higher power on the mythical day that I depart this earthly realm, though I feel I have paid my debts in full. Perhaps there is no price high enough for feeling such self-centered ruthlessness.
The darkness of night was upon us. The rain had lessened to a light drizzle.
Alright, you have the cover of darkness. Bring it on, I urged the man silently. I stared at the spot where he had appeared the night before. After blinking once, he was there. But this time, there were others. Nine others, to be exact.
“What is going on?!” A woman behind me exclaimed. She had immediately sensed the imminent danger. There was a menagerie of screams as the natives rushed forward in a blur. A blinding sheet of rain erupted from the clouds and further disoriented us.
“Get to Penny!”
The thought was almost heart-stopping in its urgency. I ran to Maura, yanked Penny from her arms, and looked at Violet for one moment, only to fill her head with the thought to follow. She looked at Maura and then back at me before running in my wake.
I do not know where we were running, but the screams were the soundtrack to our flight. With every last shriek of horror or pain I heard, a new burst of adrenaline forced my legs to move faster. With one arm, I held Penny. With the other, I pulled Violet along. The muck that was rising from the rain-soaked field was making it harder to run as quickly as was necessary. With every step, we faced the risk of becoming lodged in it, immobile and defenseless as the natives hunted us.
“Brynn!” Elijah's voice shouted behind me. I turned to see that he had become stuck. Behind him was a blur of black getting closer at a speed that was impossible for us.
There was not one thought in my mind. The clearness was what spurred me to action. I threw Penny to Violet and ran the length of the distance between us and him. I knew that my momentum rivaled that of the man in pursuit of Elijah, because I was the one who would reach Elijah first. However, the enemy was not far behind, and he would have reached Elijah just a second after I did.
Something had come over me that day in my apartment when we had faced those Reapers. A new, violent beast consumed my human self. Though I had neither claws nor fangs nor the fighting instinct of a cornered animal, I had behaved like I did. My new ability to destroy a threat on Earth was nothing compared to what suddenly overtook me there in that field on Pangaea. I took one huge leap over Elijah and tackled the man running towards us. While still in midair, I sunk my teeth down into his neck and spun around quickly so that I was behind him, latched onto his back. He fell to the ground and landed face-down in the mud.
Elijah would tell me later that my eyes had turned white, and even from a few feet away, he could see that my pupils had elongated vertically to resemble the eyes of a snake or a cat, he was not sure. He reminded me of something I had already known whilst in the heat of that fight with the native; I was suddenly gifted with sharp, pointed fangs that allowed me to rip into the man's skin wherever I could do the most damage.
What he could not tell me was what he could not possibly know, unless he was reading my mind the way I could read his. As the man flipped over and landed gracefully on his hands and feet before standing up to charge me, my mind remained blank except for one basic thought. It was the last, most vital instinct of them all: Protect.
When he had flipped, he had sent me hurtling through the air to land painlessly on my back. I pushed myself up with a strength I had never before exhibited and charged right at him. Though he was clearly used to such power and skill, I was the one who took him down. I pinned his arms to the ground and slammed my head down into his, drawing in raspy, hissing breaths.
Elijah would tell me that I made an odd noise resembling a roar that I was attempting to stifle.
“It was so freaking awesome!” He would rave later, though I will admit, that the fourth word in his thrilled exclamation has been revised in order to cater to my profane hatred of profanity.
The man tried to free his arms, but my grip on him was tight enough to shatter his wrists. His fight to throw me off enraged me even further, and I slammed my head down into his again, only this time with even more brutal force. Whoever said that one cannot win with a head-butt was wrong. Though I will admit that I felt a slight sting, my mind remained clear. I was still able to fight with reckless and violent efficiency.
“Don't kill him!” Violet exclaimed, and I looked up just as I went to sink my teeth down into the pulsing vein of the stranger's throat. I would not drink his blood. I would simply kill him. I would kill him so that he was no longer a threat.
“Listen to your sister.” My father's voice said behind me. Though I was not looking, several others were with him, approaching us from behind. Half the campsite was coming to witness the strange event. “Don't kill him. We need him.”
Just because my father told me not to, I inched down closer to the man's throat, feeling an overpowering urge to rip into his skin. I couldn't deny it. I needed to ki
ll him. He had been after Elijah. He was a threat to him. I needed to ensure my brother's safety by ending that man's life.
But Violet had been the first to order me not to kill him. In fact, it had barely been an order. It was more of an imploring plea. I looked up at her, the rain casting a moving gray sheet between us. Still, I could see her clearly. What was happening to me frightened her, and to see me kill another living being, human or not, would only worsen her new fear. So, I released the man's arms, jumped up and ran my fingers through my mud and rain-drenched hair, all the while loathing the fact that I had to turn my target over to my father when I so desperately needed to dispatch him violently from this world myself.
Of course, I knew letting go of him was the worst thing I could do, and I was right, as usual; he jumped up and turned to run. I could not be sure whether he was attempting to get away, or if he was going after Elijah again. For my brother's sake, I had to believe the latter. Without even turning around, I swung my fist back and hit the man hard in the face; the force sent him hurtling backwards to land sprawled out on his back.
Several of the men in our camp grabbed hold of him. I watched in slight amusement as ten of them hauled him off. It took ten fully grown men to subdue one. It was as a small smile pulled at my lips that I noticed the remaining spectators spectating me. Some looked downright horrified by my very existence. Others were bemused. Others thought I was easily the coolest thing on Pangaea. Others were expressionless, though their screaming minds betrayed their fear and curiosity.
My father was the only one whose mind shouted the livid thoughts of a confused and betrayed man. He felt that I had lied to him, though why he expected honesty after so many years of hatred between us, I was not sure. He felt that I had kept a dangerous secret from him, though he could not determine the exact nature of what it was that I had been hiding. I was one of them, he believed. I had always been one of them. But no, he had seen my birth. He knew that I was human.
The last word through his mind was one even he tried to push away:
Infected.
The alarm I felt at hearing that word spoken, even in his thoughts, was so sudden that it stole my breath away. I was not afraid of how he would handle my “infection,” though I should have been. I was more worried about being thought of as dangerously ill in the first place.
Elijah stood up, grasped my hand, and pulled me away from the gawking, silent crowd. The rain had ceased suddenly, so my brother, sisters, and I walked to the edge of the campsite that had been abandoned in the fight.
“Penny, did you see anything?” I asked her softly. They were odd words to speak after such a brutal occurrence but truly, Penny emerging without any scars, physical or emotional, was my chief concern.
Penny shook her head and reached her arms out to me. I felt that she was trembling with cold and potent fear. I knew that I could remedy both. I stood up with her as she clung to me with every last bit of her young strength. I reached into a tent and pulled out a blanket; I would repay the owner with my own later. After prying Penny from me in order to wrap her up, I swaddled her like a baby, even going so far as to tuck her arms inside the confines of the blanket. Then, I cradled her close to my chest, feeling my eyes dissolve back into their normal blue as they met her wide, fearful eyes.
Her fear was not of me, God bless her. Her fear was of what had just happened. Her fear was of the natives.
I shushed her when she started to cry softly. I rested my cheek against her forehead and rocked her back and forth, back and forth. My only thought was to warm and calm her. Though my muscles were beginning to ache and an angry cut on my forehead was dripping blood into my left eye, I thought of nothing but my sweet little sister.
It was strange, how I could switch from feeling nothing but a need to kill a living creature to a need to comfort one I held so very dearly to me.
I was thinking only of tranquility as I held her, believing wholeheartedly that I could soothe her not just with my words and my arms around her but also with calming thoughts. I was so lost in them that I was beginning to believe that such peace was actually possible. Even after I lulled her to sleep, I stayed drunk on that fabled serenity. I did not reemerge from its depths until I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I opened my eyes.
Penny was still nestled against my chest, fast asleep. I turned to look, expecting to see Elijah or Violet standing there. Instead, I saw my father standing with his burly minions behind him. Instead, I saw the butt of a shotgun being pulled back.
The last thing I heard was Penny screaming.