Dead Flesh (16 page)

Kayla

Sam and I ran
round the side of the school building with the
Zap! Zap! Zap!
sounds fizzing behind from the
schoolyard. Without even noticing it, a Grey pounced from a doorway
like a shadow detaching itself from the wall. From beneath its
flowing robes, the Grey produced one of those sticks and fired it
up. Coils of blue-mauve electricity snapped from the end of it and
lit up the mouth of the Grey which protruded from beneath its
hoodie like a jagged cliff edge.

“STOP!”
the Grey roared, pointing the stick at me and
Sam.

Sending up
plumes of dust from beneath our shoes, we both skidded to a halt,
stopping inches from the sizzling electric sparks.

“Follow me,”
the Grey ordered us.

“We haven’t
done anything wrong!” Sam insisted.

“Stop your
noise, Brook, or I’ll fry you,” the Grey grinned from beneath his
hood.

“But…” Sam
started.

Zzzzzzz
…the Grey waved the stick under Sam’s nose and
he staggered backwards like a tightrope walker.

“Get going!”
the Grey cried, pointing in the direction that we had come.

We made our way
back onto the yard, the Grey inches behind us.

What have I done?
I wondered.
Perhaps Sam had been right, I shouldn’t have tried to get
involved.

Pryor was bent
double on his knees and he looked sick. Dorsey was knelt beside
him, and he was wringing his hands together in his lap. Behind them
stood two of the Greys. One of them was huge and towered over the
other, and although I couldn’t see his face, I knew it was Brother
Michael.

Sam and I
joined Pryor and Dorsey as a giant of a man strode onto the yard.
Without him even having to introduce himself, I knew that this was
McCain, the self-appointed Headmaster. His hair was black and
slicked back over his brow. He was incredibly thin, borderline
anorexic-looking. His cheeks were so sunken that it looked as if he
was permanently sucking in mouthfuls of air. His nose was so
bulbous and red; it was like something a circus clown would have
been proud of. But it was his eyes. I had seen eyes like that
before - Jack Seth had had a set. They glowed a brilliant yellow
from within two sunken eye sockets. McCain was a wolf – a
Skin-walker.

“Get up!” he
barked at Pryor and Dorsey.

Pryor was the
first to stand, although his legs looked as if they might buckle
under him at any moment sending him crashing back onto the ground.
His eyes brimmed with pain, but even so, he eyed McCain with
defiance.

Dorsey was
slower to get up, so I stepped forward and looped my arm through
his and dragged him to his feet.

“Get off me,”
Dorsey groaned. “I don’t need your help.”

I let go of
him, startled at his ungratefulness. Dorsey swayed from side to
side like a drunk.

McCain walked
amongst them like a caged tiger. “Well, well, well!” he said. “Time
after time it’s the same old faces lined up before me.”

“Excuse me,
sir, but I’ve never -” Sam began, but was cut short as the Grey
behind him dry-stunned him in the back with his electric stick.

“Aaaarrrgghh!”
Sam cried out, locking up on the spot
and going rigid. I glanced at Sam, his thick, black curly hair had
straightened like he had just stuck his fingers into a wall socket.
The effects were momentary, and Sam unlocked and loosened up.

“Wow, that
hurt!” he groaned under his breath at me.

“Just keep your
gob shut,” I whispered back, just wanting to get out of this
situation without drawing any attention to myself. Jeez, I’d been
at the school less than twenty-four hours and I was already in the
shit with the Headmaster.

McCain stepped
forward and said, “Even when you’re lined up before me, you don’t
know when to keep quiet do you, Hunt?”

I looked at
him, surprised that he knew my name already. McCain’s nostrils
flared in and out, they looked red and sore.

“Well?” McCain
said.

“Well what,
sir?” I asked. “I don’t know what you mean,
sir
.”

McCain’s lips
contorted into a bloodless grin. “I can tell that you think you’re
a real smartarse, don’t you, Hunt? You’ve only been here five
minutes and I can tell we’re going to have trouble from you.”

“I don’t know
what you mean,
sir
,” I said again. I
wasn’t really scared by him. I had dealt with werewolves before. I
had met Jack Seth and he had been a complete and utter freak, a
screw-up, but dangerous. He could teach McCain a thing or two.

McCain eyed me
with suspicion and said, “You even say
‘sir’
like a smartarse. Well, let me make myself
clear. In here, you’re mine. I own you. You are no one and you have
no one.” Then, stepping away from me, McCain looked at the four of
us who stood before him. “The lot of you have been given over to me
by your parents or you were orphaned and the state gave you to me
to look after. And this is how you show your gratitude, by behaving
like wild animals?”

McCain strode
towards Pryor, and Pryor looked away.

“Look at me,
Pryor!” McCain roared, grabbing hold of his face and snapping it
towards him. “Don’t think you can throw your weight around in here.
No wonder your mother and father ran out on you. God knows if I’d
had a son like you I might have been tempted to disappear!”

I watchedPryor
clench his fists into two meaty clubs.

“You’re nothing
but an animal so you’ll be treated as such,” McCain roared.
“Brother Michael, take this vermin to the rat-house.”

Hearing this,
Pryor loosened his fists and said, “Not the
rat-house
. I spent most of last week in there!”

“You shouldn’t
worry, Pryor, you’ll be in good company – the Addison twins are
serving a fortnight in there. Now get going!”

Brother Michael
stepped forward, and taking hold of Pryor by the arm, he marched
him across the yard.

“What’s the
rat-house?” I whispered at Sam.

“Some
rat-infested shack,” he whispered back.

“Please, Mr.
McCain!” Pryor pleaded over his shoulder. “Anything but the
rat-house!
”

Then, there was
the
zapping
sound and Pryor crumpled to
his knees. Taking hold of him by the tails of his blazer, Brother
Michael dragged Pryor off the yard and out of sight. McCain
approached Dorsey and looked down at him.

“You need to
toughen up, boy, or no wolf will ever want to be matched with you,”
McCain told him, like Dorsey would be missing out on some sought
after honour. “What’s your problem? That house fire melt your
backbone along with your face?”

Dorsey stood
staring down at the ground and said nothing.

“Answer me,”
McCain said, rummaging in his trouser pocket.

“Can’t you
leave the kid alone?” Sam suddenly said from further down the line.
“Can’t you see he’s got…
issues
?”

“You’ll have
issues
in a minute, Brook, if you don’t
keep your trap shut!” McCain barked, and he nodded at the Grey who
stood behind him.

“Aaaarrrgghh!”
Sam shrieked as he was zapped again from
behind.

“Brother
Vincent, take this
jellyfish
Dorsey to the
pool and don’t let him leave until he has swam a hundred laps. It
might help him develop a spine,” McCain said. Then taking a bottle
of sinus spray from his pocket, he rammed it up his own right
nostril and breathed in.

“But I can’t
swim,” Dorsey whispered.

“Then it’s
about time you learnt,” McCain sniffed, screwing the cap back onto
the bottle and putting it away.

Brother Vincent
took Dorsey by the scruff of the neck and marched him back into the
school. McCain waltzed in front of me and said, “It would appear
that
your
parents were in need of some
swimming practice, Hunt.”

I met McCain’s
cruel stare and said, “My parents were excellent swimmers.”

“That’s not
what your uncle told me when we spoke on the telephone. Didn’t your
mother and father drown?”

You know they drowned and I’m not going to give you the
satisfaction of thinking that you’re hurting me,
I smiled to
myself.

“So it would
seem, s
ir
,” I said, emphasising the word
‘sir’, knowing that it pissed McCain off.

McCain wiped
the tip of his bulbous nose with his forefinger and stared hard
into my eyes.

“Give me your
stick,” he said, holding out his hand towards the Grey who stood
behind me. The Grey passed him the stick and straightened the folds
of his robes.

“Put out your
hands, Hunt,” McCain said, his voice just above a whisper and his
eyes never leaving mine.

I did as he
asked and held out my hands, palms facing upwards. Bracing myself
for the pain, I tightened the muscles throughout my entire body.
McCain raised the stick and I could hear it humming, like the sound
of a cat purring in the sunshine. Except there wasn’t any sunshine.
The sky was the colour of gunmetal and full of clouds.

McCain fired up
the stick, and hues of blue and pink flashed in his eyes. I
clenched my jaw and gritted my teeth.

Here comes the pain!
I thought.

But yet it
didn’t. McCain thrust the sparking end of the stick into the palm
of my hand and I felt nothing. The stick hissed and spat and the
smell of burning skin wafted up into the air. I was startled by the
sweetness of its scent – like roasted pork glazed with
applesauce.

McCain’s eyes
widened, not because of the smell of my roasting flesh, but the
fact that I seemed to feel no pain. Yanking the stick away, McCain
pressed down as hard as he could onto the fleshy ball of skin
beneath the thumb on my other hand. Again the stick hissed and
spat, sending tendrils of smoke up into the air. But again, I felt
nothing. I didn’t even flinch. I just stared hard into McCain’s
eyes.

What’s happening here? This should be frying me!
I
thought.
But then again, I was dead – did I not
feel pain now?

More out of
frustration than spite, McCain bore the end of the electric stick
down into the palm of my hand again. I looked up at McCain and
couldn’t help but notice that his nose had started to bleed.

Staring at him,
I said, “Your nose is bleeding, s
ir
.”

McCain removed
the stick from my hand and he wiped the end of his nose against his
suit sleeve. Looking down, I could see blood smeared up his wrist.
McCain touched the tip of his nose with his fingers and looked at
the globules of red that now covered them. He glanced at me and
wiped his nose with the back of his hand, spreading the blood
across his upper lip like a crooked crimson moustache. I looked
down at my hands, they were blistered and raw. The skin around my
fingers had turned black and crisp in places, and streams of white
liquid-fat oozed from the fleshiest parts of my hands.

McCain looked
at them too, and realising that I wasn’t in any pain, he turned to
the Greys standing behind Sam and me and said, “Get them out of my
sight. Send them back to their rooms.”

Kiera

I was woken by
the sound of the telephone ringing. Potter groaned beside me and
rolled over. Without surfacing from beneath the bed covers, I
fumbled blindly about the bedside table as my hand tried to locate
the phone. I plucked the receiver from its cradle and dragged it
under the covers with me.

“Hello,” I
groaned, still partially asleep.

“Hudson!
Hudson, is that you?” an irritable and obnoxious voice asked.

“Speaking,” I
mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes with my free hand. I felt
Potter’s hand brush against my thigh and flicked it away.

“It’s Inspector
Cliff Banner,” he barked down the phone at me. He didn’t sound
happy.

As soon as I
realised who it was on the other end of the phone, I yanked the
blankets from over my head and sat up.

“I’ve got some
good news and bad news for ya,” he snapped.

“Okay,” I said
as I tried to focus on what he was about to tell me.

“The good news
is that your friend Emily Clarke is still in the land of the
living, walking around as pretty as you like!”

I felt relief
and shock all at the same time to hear this piece of news. I had
convinced myself that Emily had been murdered by McCain.

“So, what’s the
bad news?” I asked cautiously.

“You’ve been
wasting my fucking time!That’s the bad news!” he roared down the
line at me. “I got onto the bank first thing this morning - gave
‘em your friend’s details. Within the hour they had faxed me back
with a list of transactions she’s made in the last week!”

“Oh…” I started
to say, but he cut me dead and continued to rant.

“How long did
you say she’s been missing?”

“About four
days.”

“Jeezus wept!
According to these bank records, she was buying Cadbury’s chocolate
fingers in the local Seven-Eleven at ten-thirty yesterday morning
for crying out loud!” he bellowed.

I felt Potter’s
hand brush against my thigh, and again I brushed it away.

Then it hit me.
Banner hadn’t actually spoken to or physically seen Emily Clarke.
He was just going on a computer printout from credit card
transactions. Credit cards which were rightly in Emily Clarke’s
name, but not necessarily being used by
her
.

“Has anyone
been to the store and spoken to staff or checked out the CCTV?” I
asked Banner.

“Has anybody
been…?” he sounded exasperated with me. “Listen, I’m up to my
frigging neck in shit down here and you expect me to go running
around town on some fantasy…looking for your friend who is
supposedly missing! Jeez, if this is her idea of going missing, I’d
hate to see what happens when she gets fucking lost!” he
bellowed.