Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (12 page)

Blueeyes’
finger tightened on the trigger. “Close enough.” 

The shadows didn’t appreciate the threat. They hissed in unison.

Sensing their anger, the bony thing in front of us lifted his arm and motioned for the group to relax. His face grew serious. His gaze narrowed, focusing on
Blueeyes.
“We leave the eating of children to the
breathers,
sir. You have my assurance that none among us will harm the girl.” Suddenly, his chin lifted. His nostrils flared. He was sniffing, inhaling a particular scent in the air and desperately trying to make sense of it.

When he was through, his milky eyes settled again on
Blueeyes.
“And you…you’re something different…you we can’t eat…you’re…” Blank eyes widened. “What exactly are you?”

12.

I’d never seen a
biter
before. I’d seen the aftermath of their attacks, but never one in person and never so close. Truthfully, at the time I had no idea that’s what I was looking at. Everything was a monster. Everything wanted to kill me, eat me. At some point, the differences between them no longer mattered. The creature’s eyes remained on
Blueeyes,
wild and wide, mouth agape. It seemed confused by his very existence. 

My traveling companion didn’t move, didn’t blink. His shotgun remained forward, machete at the ready. “What are you talking about?”

The
biter
grinned. “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re not one of us, not one of them…” His bony finger pointed in my direction, and I shivered. “Certainly not one of her.”

Blueeyes
nudged me backward. He didn’t like what he was hearing, that much was obvious. He didn’t want to hear it anymore. “We’re leaving.”

“Wait!” There was a sense of urgency in the
biter’s
voice. “Please!” When he took a step forward,
Blueeyes
took one as well.

There was no subtlety in the maneuver.
Blueeyes
would not be trifled with. He would not back down from anything, ever. 

The creature sensed this as well. It lowered its arms and relaxed its stance, changing tactics. “You will not survive out there.
Howlers
patrol this area regularly. They’re as much a danger to us as they are to you. Doesn’t matter that they can’t eat us…happy simply killing. They know we’re here and stay away when we’re grouped. If you’re out there, alone, they will find you.” He looked at me for a moment, then back at
Blueeyes.
“Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but the girl…her scent will prove…
intoxicating.
”

I hated that word. I hated the way he said it. I wanted to leave. I didn’t like how he was looking at me, or the army of glowing eyes lurking in the shadows. It felt wrong, everything. I didn’t know why we weren’t leaving. We needed to leave. When I grabbed hold of
Blueeyes’
pants leg and tugged, he brushed my arm away. 

The
biter
took a step back, voice softening in a vain attempt to sound more human. “My name is Andrew.”

I didn’t know why he had a name.

I didn’t like him having a name.

Blueeyes
shared my feelings. “Don’t care what your name is.”

The features on the
biter’s
face softened further, eyes dimmed. “You’ve encountered us before. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I? You are well aware of how things work. If you weren’t, you’d have fired your weapon already.”

Blueeyes
gave him nothing.

The next time
Andrew
lifted his arm the shadow eyes began to disappear, slowly folding into the black. His expression changed again, almost pleading. “This doesn’t have to end badly.”

Outside the
howlers
wailed. If
Blueeyes
heard them, he didn’t let on. His weapon never lowered, not an inch. He was thinking. I had no idea what he was thinking, but he was thinking, planning and putting things together, weighing his options. Time stopped. Everything quieted. No one moved. The whole of the world folded to the point of a pin, tiny and dangerous. I could hear my heartbeat, uneven, pounding against my chest. Faint whispers emerged from the shadows, muffled. It felt like hours before
Blueeyes
spoke. 

“Touch the girl and I kill you.”

The
biter
nodded.

“Talk to the girl and I kill you.”

The
biter
nodded again.

“Look at the girl and I kill every last one of you.”

“Understood.”

Blueeyes
motioned to the shadows, to whispers from the abyss. “Make sure they know.”

“I assure you there is nothi—”

“Don’t care about assurances.” His finger tightened against the trigger. “Make sure they know.”

“Done. In exchange for your safety I require only one th—”

Blueeyes
took another step forward and mashed the shotgun barrel against the
biter’s
forehead. The creature’s arms went to the air, body stiffened. The shadows hissed. The eyes reappeared. When
Blueeyes
spoke, he growled. “You require nothing. You stay on your side of the building, we stay on ours, and you don’t die. It’s as simple as that.”

It was a while before the
biter
responded and, when he did, it was without words. One of his feet timidly slid backward, then the other. Keeping his hands in the air, he returned to the darkness, swallowed. The moment he was gone, the eyes disappeared. 

Blueeyes
moved me to the corner of the building, nudged me to the wall, and told me to sit. I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to do anything but sit. I wanted to help him. I wanted to leave. We were making a mistake, staying there; I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t care how many
howlers
were outside or what time of night it was. The monsters outside had to be better than the eyes, better than the whispers. They were still whispering. They never stopped whispering.

I let
Blueeyes
know. “We’re going to stay here? We can’t stay here.”

“We can and we are.”

The bluntness of his response annoyed me. “No! We can’t! I can—”

He squeezed my shoulders, dropped to one knee, and pinned me against the wall. His voice was measured, a hushed rage. “Quiet.” Outside the
howlers
screamed. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We won’t survive out there.”

“But what abou—”

“You need to trust me.” He was close, so close I could feel his breath on my face and count the wrinkles on his forehead. When the moonlight hit his eyes, they glimmered. “Do you trust me, Megan?”

I did. He was all I had. He was my
friend.
 

I nodded. 

I sat.

It was a long night. I didn’t try to sleep, didn’t even close my eyes. As closely as I listened to the whispering, as hard as I tried to make sense of it, I couldn’t. It was almost another language. Every word ran together and every syllable elongated, stretched to the point they became unrecognizable. I could feel the
biters
watching us, their eyes far enough away to keep from being seen, yet close enough to let us know they weren’t going anywhere. It didn’t feel right, being so close to so many of them, being surrounded. I thought about
Andrew.
His name made me uncomfortable, the fact he even had a name at all. It was wrong. He was a monster, a
biter.
They were all monsters. And yet, when he looked at me, it didn’t seem like he wanted to hurt me, drink my blood and leave me on the side of the road. He was smart, aware. He wasn’t what I’d imagined or what I thought he should be. That’s what bothered me most. That’s what made it worse. For hours I sat in my corner,
Pointycrunch
on my lap, an arrow at the ready.
Blueeyes
remained on his feet less than two feet away, shotgun in one hand, machete in the other.  His eyes never slipped from the shadows, subtle movements in the darkness. He never stopped listening, never relaxed. He was tracking them the entire time. I wondered if he could understand them, if he knew what they were saying. I was too scared to ask.

As daylight approached, the shadows moved away: most of them. Thin rays of sunlight found their way through the cracks in the roof. The
biters
didn’t seem to like the sun and did their best to avoid it. In the morning light, the building looked larger. The top floors were overrun with
biters.
There must have been fifty scattered through the complex, asleep on steel beams thirty feet up, huddled in densely shadowed areas. Occasionally one of them would glance in my direction, blank eyes staring, gray tongue dragging over cracked lips. Most of them were old, sickly, on the brink of starvation. They looked like they were dying again. When one of them waved, I didn’t know how to react. It was a
she,
a child, not much older than me. Until that moment I had no idea there were
biter
children. Suppose I never considered it. Her hand lowered and her lips curled upward. She was smiling.

Why was she smiling?

Before I could put any more thought into it, the ceiling exploded. Stone turned to pebble, steel to shards, everything engulfed by a cloud of dust. It was loud. I felt it in my bones, in my chest and down my legs. My hands went to my ears, flaming bits of sand and debris crisscrossing the sky. When
Blueeyes
screamed, I couldn’t hear him. His mouth opened and a hum emerged, steady and unending. I felt something warm against the palm of my hand. It was blood. My ears were bleeding. 

The
biters
in the rafters scattered, leaping for the shadows, their home crumbling around them. A flurry of bullets riddled the wall beside me, tearing through stone, ricocheting off iron.
Blueeyes
wrapped me in his arms, devouring me with the whole of his body, gunfire popping around us. Something else exploded. Something collapsed.
Blueeyes’
body jerked. Warm blood sprayed my face, soaked my hair. Suddenly, I was airborne, everything around us bending inward, everything on fire. Twisted steel swung from a cloud of soot and missed us by inches, obliterating a nearby wall. Everything turned to dust, smoky and thick. When I inhaled, it coated my insides. When I coughed, it wouldn’t let me stop. A chunk of concrete slammed into my skull. Three of them bounced off
Blueeyes
. Through the cloud of debris I saw guns, so many guns. They were outside the building, silhouettes against the morning light, flashing just beyond the smoke. They were moving closer. I mashed my face into
Blueeyes’
chest,
Pointycrunch
wedged between us. His shoulder tore open, belched red. A bullet had torn through cleanly, coating his arm in crimson and bits of bone. He grunted, lurched, and grit his teeth. He never stopped moving. A chunk of his leg ripped away. A bone in his forearm snapped in two. 

Riddled with steel and engulfed in flames, a pillar near the center of the building collapsed and folded in half. Most of the second floor followed. When it fell, the biters fell with it. The ringing in my ears disappeared as quickly as it had come. Suddenly, I could hear everything, the guns and the explosions, the high-pitched wailing of the
biters.
One of the creatures leapt over our heads, screaming, fingers coiled into fists. I watched as it navigated the flames, exited the fiery structure and charged the firing squad outside. Within seconds it was dead. The bullets hit it all at once, everywhere. When the
biter
hit the ground, it did so in pieces. 

Something else exploded. Something fell. A bullet whizzed past the back of my head, so close it tossed my hair. There was too much happening, too much to take in. When I looked up at
Blueeyes,
his face was soaked in blood. His shoulder was unrecognizable, a chunk of pulsating meat splattered with black. We passed through a wall of smoke and found a wall of fire. In the middle were a group of
biters,
flames whipping around them. Their white skin had turned black, charred and peeling away, heat blisters popping. One of them looked at me, tears in his eyes, fingers scratching at burnt flesh. Before he crumpled to the dirt, he reached for me, through the flames and the smoke, as if there were something I could do. 

He was wrong.  

“This way!” Somehow the voice rose above the madness. It was
Andrew.
He was standing in an opening in the floor, eyes wide, impossibly skinny fingers waiving us in his direction. “Hurry!”

Blueeyes
didn’t move. I felt his body tighten, weighing his options. The gunshots were getting louder. Another section of roof broke loose, crumbling onto the
biters
already trapped beneath, shards of glass like rain. The structure wouldn’t last much longer. It should have fallen minutes ago. I heard voices, faint, angry, from outside the confines of our fiery abode. 

“Move in!”

“Burn those sons of bitches!”

A flurry of gunfire shattered the concrete behind us. Steel ripped, spewing steam. More
biters
screamed.

Andrew
grabbed my forearm and pulled. “We have to go!”

Blueeyes
didn’t pull back. We rushed past the
biter,
descended into the darkness. He followed us inside, closed the trapdoor, and locked it. With the next explosion, everything shook. It was all coming down. The trapdoor above us bent inward, nearly snapped in two. Black smoke poured into our tiny hideaway.
Blueeyes
pulled my face into his chest, his hand on the back of my head, fingers wrapped in filthy hair.

“Follow me! Stay close!”
Andrew
hurried past us. Unable to see him,
Blueeyes
followed his voice and the faintest hint of his translucent eyes. The underground tunnel was cramped, no more than five feet wide in any direction. The walls were uneven, lumpy, as if they were dug by hand and dug in haste. As we moved deeper, the screams from above faded away. The gunshots slowed. Only the shuffling of biter feet remained. I pulled my face out of
Blueeyes’
chest and inhaled. The air was stale and stank of decay, of things dying and already dead. I didn’t like it. With my legs wrapped around his waist, I clutched his jacket. His back was soaked, slippery with blood, torn fabric flapping. I traced the bullet holes with my fingers, too many to count. I didn’t know how he was standing. He shouldn’t have been standing. He shouldn’t have been breathing. I shouldn’t have been able to hear the heart pounding in his chest, feel his lungs inflate and his breath against the top of my head. He should have been dead.