Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (131 page)

“
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 this
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.