The Risen (Book 2): Margaret (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

A
wareness comes to me slowly. Inch by inch, my body returns to me with a dull sensation. The hot, scalding fire is gone. The pain is now just an ache that fills a dark void in me. There is commotion all around me that creeps into my mind with a memory. It is a fleeting feeling of something that I feel I should know. I should know, but it flickers and fades before I can fully grasp what it is that I should be remembering. I lose interest in it just as easily as it slipped away.

“Margaret?” I know her voice. It lures me into a higher level of awareness and out of the dark blackness that surrounds me.

“Margaret, can you hear me? Open your eyes.” I feel my eyes blink, but it is still only blackness before me. It clears like a cloud of smoke retreating from the wind allowing me to see into the room. The woman is silhouetted at first in a sharp shaded contrast against the lights overhead. I can’t see her yet, but I can smell her.

She smells like sweet confectioner’s candy floating around me. Like the thick cookies cooling on a counter of a bakery. My mouth grows wet with the scent of her. My body craves things that I don’t understand. I don’t understand the images that are flashing through my mind’s eye. I don’t understand the things my body wants me to do to this woman, whose voice I know that I should somehow remember. I have a moment of shame over my weakness. I want to do it all the same though.

My vision clears more, leaving the room in shades of muted colors. Nothing is brighter, or darker, than the basic need for it to be. Light is subdued yet penetrates the dark shadows and allows me to see deeper into them as if I am peering through the tinted lens of sunglasses. My vision is crisp, but muted. Not that it really matters. What I want is right in front of me and I can see her just fine.

She is leaning over me with a flashlight, trying to force its bright beam into one eye and then the other, but I do not blink from it. I can smell her shampoo lingering in the dark curls that cover us like a curtain. Her mouth is moving, speaking to me, but I don’t hear the words. Her words are not important. Only the tender flesh of her neck that pulses like a welcoming neon sign holds my focus now. My tongue dances behind my lips with a hunger that I can’t explain and a part of me panics with it.

Words are being shouted across the room. Words that hold tones of hope from many female voices as eyes open again. The words that bring a smile to the face floating above me now that my eyes are open. It is the sudden scream that strips that smile just as fast as the words pulled it to her face. We are all awake.

A male voice fills the air with his melody of misery. Joy dances inside me upon hearing it. Horror dances with the woman before me. The sound is as sweet as she smells and when she turns her head to see the cause, I show her the reason behind the screams.

My body instinctively knows just what to do, even if I do not. My hands weave into her thick hair, pulling her neck to my mouth with a strength that I have never used before. I lean up into her with a maddening desire which thrills me and scares me with the same weight of emotion. Her screams pull a response from my body that I shouldn’t hold inside me, but I do. It pulls a response that tears out of me as I tear into the sweet meat of her neck like a beast that has been caged and waiting.

Her blood tastes like the thick syrup of honey on my tongue and I am disappointed with every bright red drop that escapes from my mouth. Her flesh is chewy and moist, like a cake surrounding a decadent filling, and I simply can’t get enough of her. All panic slides away from me with each mouthful of this woman that slides down my throat.

Even as my mind soothes with my actions, a tiny voice mentally whispers that this is not right. I am not sure what is not right about it, but some small part of me is unsettled by what I am doing. Each bite brings the pain down. It fills the void that was aching inside me. Contentment settles over me like a warm blanket. A blanket that is as red and warm as the blood that fills my throat. The heavy weight of her now still form lulls me into a daze of joy that I want to stay in the thick of forever.

I know there are still screams that surround me. Screams that perk my senses like the music of an ice cream truck in the hot summer’s heat. They fill the air with many flavors.

The high pitched screams of terror captivate my attention like exotic spices. The twisting of flavors with the screams of agony are like a perfect combination of sweet and sour. Then for a soothing aftertaste, there are the ones of pleading and defeat. Their taste is subtle and rich like a thick after dinner dessert. Each is tempting in their own way and I, with my new hunger and desires, am lured away from the meal in my mouth now that the rich blood flows slower. It grows thicker against my tongue, losing some of its ripe appeal.

The weight is heavy, but I am able to roll her off of me. The screams reach me in a surround sound of style with the division of the room making them bounce with an echo. There are those, like me, over-taken by a set of new desires that we do not understand, but simply obey. We are blocking out the nagging whispers of uncertainty of our actions fueled by the need to obtain the joyful bliss when the pain stops. The pain that can only be stopped by the moist flesh and syrup of thick fluids that are more refreshing than anything I have ever swallowed before.

Standing before me, we are all testing our new bodies now that the pain has dulled some. My fingers are a duo of jerking and yet gliding motions as I command them to move. My head feels heavy and rests at a slightly lowered angle for ease of position. My eyes are also better from this vantage point. I can see into the deeper shadows and once vivid shades now diminish their hues allowing for better tracking of movements. All around me, those that I know were once more than just replicas of my new self, stand immobilized as hunters, narrowing in on the source of the screams.

Eyes watch as we each pick our new target with self-assured results. They run in various formations trying to flee the room, but in their panic, they have trampled and blocked their own escapes. Terror is blocking their logic and that same terror excites me.

There is no signal that I am aware of given to motion us forward. We just all do. At once, like a pack of animals, we move towards the new meals, stepping over the cold bodies from which we have already fed.

We form into groups built around each other’s similarities with the same silent communication displayed before. Each group becomes a strategy of its own to take down the larger prey that we desire. When one of our own falls, with the same sudden force, we freeze, working our minds to find the answer.

She lays fallen and broken, the one that was the nearest of us to the prey. The shade of her hair and the outfit she wears triggers faded memories for me. The brightly colored fabric applied to her upper arm whispers of a lost conversation of sounds that were once words. Words that once we exchanged. A single sound beats against the walls of my mind and I know it belongs to her in someway.

April,
it screams, rolling around inside of me.

She was identified once as April, but no longer. We no longer have a need to be identified to one another by these sounds. We flock to one another instinctively.

We find those matching to that of ourselves for protection. When hunting, as we are now, those same groups split to meld into a variety of strengths to better achieve our goal. The goal of stopping the pain.

We stare at her, confused by her sudden loss and the unknown causes, when another falls in the same style. Our minds track the sound that was heard before the last fall. Like truth seeking seers, we find the object that the prey is pointing at us with shaking hands and false brave words. We stare, transfixed by the knowledge our minds report to us.

His pitch does not match the stance his body holds. His hands shake with his fears. It invites us to him. Our anger over his actions and his visible weakness targets his death as the first of many.

We move again, the same sea of us, forward now that we know who is the real threat. Never taking our eyes away from him, our sea parts, forcing him to narrow his attention. His attention may shrink, but his fear grows like ripe fruit on a limb of a sun-drunk tree. It is fragrant and fills us with curiosity of its taste.

His fear grows and festers like a wound left untreated with the panic that adds a new scent to the air. The first group reaches him, dislodging the arm that was holding the object that took two from us. The screams renew with such a volume that all self-restraint is lost. It is stripped from us with such force that not even the nagging whispers we once held can echo over the need. This need that we can no longer fight, but are slaves to and we obey.

With one mind. With one purpose. With one thought. We obey. They fall before us, under us, all around us with our attacks, like fragile toys to a toddler. Sweet syrup sprays against walls. It arches, forming fine modern art before streaking its way back to the ground. It paints the floor from our preys’ deaths with each heart that slows under our hungry mouths and brutal hands. We claim this room with our new signatures and when the screaming finally stops, the bliss begins. Mindless, peaceful bliss.

CHAPTER 9

W
ith the pain now a dull throb, I follow those that a part of me remembers around the room. Sounds flash like lightening when a part of me that I no longer enable recognizes faces or patterns worn around me. The same flash of recognition sparks on faces as I walk by. There is no emotion tied to the responses. Just the fact that they are there. I hold no remorse for the one who belongs to the sound of April, who lies as still as the discarded prey now on the painted floor. I hold no joy for the boy that walks beside me even if his blue cloth streak on his arm spurs the whispers again. We walk together not out of a bond of emotions, but for protection with exploration.

A part of us knows, even with the sheer number of us now roaming, that we are the enemy. We are the enemy to those that screamed at the sight of us, providing us with clues that we have stored for future use and for our survival. There is something that sets us apart from those that look like us, but fear us. A something that causes them to fight us with more than just the need for their own survival. They are more than just food for us and we are more than just death for them.

We explore, as a group, the new pluses and minuses of our bodies. For some of us, movements are slower. Legs slide, more than glide, across the floor with the new language our brains speak. Some move like shadows, creeping with ease and high anxieties. Eyes either stare ahead or continue to scan for movements around them. There seems to be a defining difference in us. As if some have lost a “spark” or never contained it to begin with and now it is only more obvious.

Those without “the spark” are quickly left behind in their own groups. They are ignored by those of us who see them as a “weak link”, making them a future threat. A few of the most obvious “weak links” are brutally taken down by the shadows.

There is no tasting of their flesh or exploitation of their deaths. They are ended abruptly and suddenly without so much as a pause of a thought to the action. I feel no remorse for them either.

My body responds well to my thoughts. My fingers tear when I need them to, reaching the depths of the hot, hidden meat encased in the fragile bones of my prey. My teeth clamp and shred flesh and muscles alike, like candy flavored wrappings. The only difference between those that walk with me in this new style of exploration and myself is the foot that hinders me.

It falters with my full weight, forcing me to move with more effort when stalking. There is a whisper from the dark corner of my mind with a reason for it, but it never fully reaches me. I don’t really need it to. There is no pain connected to the failing body part and I have adapted with the loss of limb. I have learned how to deal with the limitations placed on that side of my body and it is no more of a detour to death than a moment of time is to a life.

With our hungers now fed, most of us have stopped our motions and explorations. We rest, letting our minds shut down in some basic understanding of how to store the fuel to power our bodies that is being converted. My mind doesn’t so much as wander but becomes mute.

I am still aware of those around me. I am just not invested in their activities anymore. There is no need for me to fill the time. I simply wait for whatever may be next like a bird in a cage with a blanket thrown over it to sleep.