Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (21 page)

It’s a strange thing, waking up from death.
Waking up
isn’t exactly the way to describe it, more like being born again. It didn’t just happen. I wasn’t
dead
one minute and
not dead
the next. There was a process. It took a while; it hurt. There are vague images, things I can sort of remember as the change took place. And yet, they aren’t real. They aren’t
memories,
not as I knew them to be, more like half-happened dreams, the visions of someone other than myself looking down from above.  At first, at least, I was an observer. There was a forest, freezing rain and thunder, the wail of
howlers
drawn to the inferno
Blueeyes
left behind. We moved through it quickly, branches like crinkly fingers, reaching and scratching. I watched
Blueeyes,
defeated and distant, sadness etched into the wrinkles on his face. For a long while I was weightless in his arms, moving among the trees, battered by the rain I couldn’t feel. He walked for hours through the night, into the morning, and to night again. He was injured, bleeding with every step. He had to be tired. He never stopped moving. All the while I felt it growing inside me, this
thing
I was becoming. It began in my head and stretched itself along my face, spreading just below my skin. There was pain, so much pain. It was everywhere. I screamed without a mouth, shrieked into the abyss only to have it echo back. It didn’t care. This new
thing
felt dark, cold, and sharp like glass. It wanted every part of me. It didn’t matter if it had to hurt me to get what it wanted. My feelings were unimportant, something I wouldn’t need any longer. I was raw material, sustenance for an unquenchable hunger. I was food. It ate until there was nothing left, until Megan was gone and only it remained. 

Everything went away.

Nothing came back.

When I opened my eyes they weren’t my eyes, they were
hers,
my new dark
friend,
the only thing I had left. I was someone else, lying down and looking at a ceiling, but not really. It looked different; it wasn’t really a ceiling at all. Everything seemed impossible, glowing and blurred, otherworldly. When I moved my tongue I tasted acid, pungent and sour, disgusting and delicious. My entire mouth throbbed. I could feel it changing. There were things growing inside, dangerous things. Everything tingled. I moved my fingers and my bones felt light, almost hollow. Somehow I managed to lift what I thought was my arm, almost without weight, so fragile. I think I turned my head and breathed a thickness with no resemblance to air. I tried to sit.

A hand fell to chest, voice so distant. “No. Not yet.”

I didn’t question, couldn’t even if I wanted to. My insides weren’t ready. My voice hadn’t been born again.
She
was still working her way through me, slowly taking over. It went on like this for days, maybe weeks—no way of knowing. During this period I was only half aware of my existence, of the comforting hand insisting I remain immobile and the voice telling me everything would be
okay.
Eventually the world began to crystallize and sharpen, transforming into what it would forever be. There was a pain in my belly, so deep: a
hunger
unlike anything I’d felt. I wanted to eat. I needed to eat. The sensation was so overwhelming it ripped me from my slumber, from the last bit of
sleep
I’d ever have. My eyes opened to a blinding bright whiteness, impossibly hot. My hands went to my face, fingers to straining eyes.

Someone snagged my wrist, pulled them away. “No, you need to look.”

I struggled for a moment, instinctively fighting, but ultimately relented. I should have kept fighting. It hurt, pain so terrible I wanted to scream.

The voice again, “It’ll get better. Give it a moment. Just a minute more.”

As promised, the agony dulled, a dull throb. Maybe I just became accustomed to it. That’s when I saw him, the holder of my arms and the keeper of the voice. It was
Andrew.
Behind him, the walls looked more like walls, different but recognizable. I was adjusting, beginning to make sense of things. I’d seen the room before, or one like it. 

Andrew
smiled a strange
biter
smile that had no place alongside his distorted features. “There. That’s better, isn’t it?” 

He let go of my hands and I noticed them. Not mine exactly. The fingers were longer, distorted, stretched obscenely, boney knuckles and graying skin. They were gaudy things, revolting. They couldn’t be mine.

Please don’t let them be mine. 

When I tried to move them, they responded, hints of muscle visible below the skin, nails already stretching, curling to a point. They were my hands. They were also
hers. She
coiled the disgusting things into fists.
She
punched
Andrew
in his ugly face. I rolled from the half-broken cot with
her
to the floor, freakish arms flailing, lanky and awkward. When we screamed, we screamed together, voice like thunder, the wail of a
thing,
of a
beast.
Andrew
fell on top of us, wrestling us to the ground, screaming for us to relax with his disgusting mouth and horrible teeth. Two more
biters
entered the room. A bony knee fell to our chest, another to our neck. Foul hands grabbed our ankles, pinning them to the stone. 

Andrew
wailed, pleading. “Stop it! Stop!”

To our left was a door;
biter
heads peeked in, eyes wide, each uglier than the last. We wanted them to leave. We wanted them to go away, crawl back to their hole in the ground and stay there, where they belonged. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob uncontrollably until there was nothing left, until the world folded in again and went away.
She
wasn’t capable of crying, of making tears. 

We would never cry again. 

Days passed. In that time my body continued to change. My limbs narrowed and stretched and my back began to twist: the beginnings of a hunch. So many teeth emerged. In no time at all there were rows of them, new ones sprouting by the hour, stretching further into the recesses of my mouth. The color in my eyes turned to soup, milky and vague. I didn’t sleep, not any more. Everything felt different. Everything took longer, time elongating like my body, distorting. I felt lighter, faster. When I walked, I crept on silent feet, always listening, hearing it all. Often I found myself fighting the urge to drop to all fours, move like something decidedly inhuman. I wasn’t human anymore. I was
her. She
was me. We were a
monster. 

We were a
biter. 

I learned to live among them in the ruins of our underground shelter, always hungry, always hurting. I had no choice. I kept to myself, away from the group, found the closest thing to a closet, and moved inside. I liked it there; it was the only thing that felt familiar. Occasionally,
Andrew
would try to talk to me. Sitting outside my door, he’d tell me things I’d need to know, about what I’d become and what I’d have to do.

“It’s not easy, Megan. It will never be easy again.” 

I almost thought he was joking. It had never been easy. 

When he said I’d have to eat, I shuddered. “Go away.” 

I didn’t recognize my voice.

Every day
Andrew
returned and talked as I listened. He told me about his family, about his life before he changed and the things he’d left behind. He was more open about those days than anyone I’d met. He’d been a
biter
for a decade, from the onset of the fire, since the day everything changed. He’d accepted what he’d become. At the same time he refused to forget what he’d been.

I asked him the one question I needed answered. “What happened to
Blueeyes?
” 

Andrew
was confused; it took him a moment to realize who I was talking about. “Oh. He…he just left.”

For the second time in weeks, I died. My chin fell to my chest and my already cracked voice cracked again. “I-I…why?”

It was a while before
Andrew
responded. “He didn’t say…just told me to tell you
no more, Megans.
”

Blueeyes
had watched two of us die, Megans. He failed us and it was more than he could bear. When I inhaled, I could still smell him, could almost see him when I closed my eyes. I’d smelled him when I went to sleep and woke again: an aftertaste, a lingering memory of something I used to be. Despite everything
she
took from me,
she
never took that.
Andrew
would later explain that it was normal, that we all remembered the last thing we smelled before dying. He said it would never go away. For years he’d smelled nothing but raspberries; he sounded broken when he told me. I didn’t know what they were. I felt sorry for him.

Andrew
put his hand to the door. I could hear his fingers, twisted nails dragging against wood.  “I’m sorry, Megan.”

“So am I.”

More time passed; not sure how much, and I can’t say I cared. The day came when I left my closet and began to move among them. They terrified me, the way they moved, the blank eyes staring. When I looked at them I saw
monsters.
When they looked at me they saw one of their own. The strange way they spoke began to make sense: whispers and blurry words, everything stretched. I didn’t want to understand them, to speak or move like them. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I needed to leave. 

It was night when I snuck through
Andrew’s
laboratory and into the well
Blueeyes
and I had used to escape. I climbed the broken ladder, lifted the grate, and returned to the outside world for the first time. I had no plan, nowhere to go. I just wanted to run and keep running until I knew they wouldn’t find me. The world outside looked different, felt different. The night was so bright, so incredibly clear. Everything seemed transparent, ghostly. I could see through the trees and for miles in every direction. When I looked at the sky, I looked past the clouds. I saw stars, so many stars, so beautiful: hints of colors I didn’t know existed. I could hear everything. The wind was clear, smooth, like the surface of a frozen lake. My senses shimmered. 

“What are you doing, Megan?” It was
Andrew
. “You shouldn’t be out here, not yet.” 

At that moment I could have run. He might not have followed. If he had, I could have fought back. I might have escaped. 

I didn’t run, didn’t move. 

When I inhaled, I smelled
Blueeyes.
His scent hung from the trees, saturated the earth, rolled with the winds. My friend was right when he said this was my world. I wasn’t
Andrew,
didn’t have stories of
better days.
There were no fond remembrances. There was no point in running. Life had always been hard and always would be. I could adapt. I was born in this place, twice. 

Andrew
extended his hand. “Come back inside.”

This was my world and I needed to start acting like it.

If
Blueeyes
was out there, I would find him; wouldn’t stop until I did. I needed him to know he hadn’t failed me, and was one of the few I’d ever trusted. I needed him to know how much he meant. I had his scent. It wasn’t much, a
crumb.

It would have to be enough.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Novak is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and lover of all things full-blown nerdy and vaguely nerd-related. He has designed over two hundred covers for independent authors across the globe and currently resides in southern California with his wife. Megan is the first novel in the Breadcrumbs For The Nasties series. More of his work can be found at
www.novakillustration.com