The Academy: Book 2 (37 page)

Viola Burns ran until she was one foot away from the pterodactyl’s head. She pulled her
hand backwards, and Asa saw the red-metallic, shimmering polish covering her fingernails.

Wasn’t that another color earlier?

Viola brought her hand down to the reptile’s face, backhanding the creature. Asa thought that no matter how mutated Viola was, the backhand would be a poor choice of offense.
How much could a blow like that seriously hurt that wide set of jawbones?

Asa was wrong, though. He didn’t consider the fact that he was unaware of many of his teammates’ mutations.

Immediately as Viola’s fingernails made contact with the reptile’s skin, there was a sound like the clap of thunder and a cascade of pterodactyl blood, bone and tongue splashed down onto Lilly Bloodroot’s face, turning her white hair red.

Anguished, the pterodactyl reared back. Half its jaw was now missing.

In the animal’s pain, it had stopped trying to bite down on Lilly’s neck. Lilly released the pterodactyl’s crumbling jaw and made her right hand into a fist in front of the reptile’s face. It was an odd gesture to make.
Is she hesitating punching this thing?
Lilly’s eyes were locked onto the pterodactyl’s nostrils.

Asa noticed a bump on Lilly’s forearm, just below the palm of her hand. It looked somewhat like a terrible spider bite in that it was swollen and there were two small holes in the topmost part. This area looked different from a spider bite in that it wasn’t red, but the same pale color as the rest of her skin.

For the second time that day, Asa forgot that many of his teammates probably had mutations he didn’t know about. They didn’t know about his echolocation, so why would he know all of their secrets? He didn’t think much of these bumps.

The pterodactyl was hissing more frantically below Asa. It moved back and forth, jerking its head in sporadic movements.

Another pterodactyl approached quickly from behind Viola Burns. It charged at her, not slowing, not hesitating and when it opened its gaping jaws to grab Viola’s neck, she placed her hand deep into its throat. In that instant, Asa heard the same thunder-like noise that had been emitted when Viola had blown the jaw off of the first pterodactyl. This time, with Viola’s hand lodged deep inside, whatever power she had was more effective. The top half of the pterodactyl’s head was blown off. Brains splattered to the tile and the carcass fell to the ground.

Meanwhile, the pterodactyl Asa was on top of was still reeling from the initial blow and dripping blood. It was waving its head frantically. Beneath this animal, Lilly was still holding her fist up to the creature, and Asa noticed that odd bump again.

The pterodactyl froze for a moment, and the bump on Lilly Bloodroot’s arm contracted, spraying a fine, pink powder at a fast rate. Just as the powder shot out, the pterodactyl’s head jerked again, and all of the pink, mysterious powder flew right into Asa’s face. It covered his skin.

Not knowing what this powder was, he had enough of a sound mind to hold his breath so that he wouldn’t inhale any of the substance. However, immediately after the pink matter made contact with his skin, he began to cough uncontrollably. These involuntary contractions and relaxations of his diaphragm filled his lungs with the pink powder. He actually felt it go down his throat and into his lungs. It was warm, and the linings of his airways began to feel tingly like a human extremity that hasn’t had enough circulation.

Lilly cursed. “I’m so sorry, Asa.”

Asa hadn’t seen Viola coming towards them, and
suddenly he heard another explosion; this time, the pterodactyl beneath him died, and fell to the tile.

Asa rolled with the animal and tumbled onto the floor. Knowing that other prehistoric creatures were still standing, and still hungry, he got quickly to his feet.

Asa tried to look across the room to take stock of the remaining pterodactyls and the enormous pterosaur, however, a dark black smoke was filling the room. Panicking, he circled around, and saw that the smoke was coming in through all of the windows from the outside.

Is something on fire? Is this some type of lethal gas?

The thick, black smoke piled in until the only things Asa could still see were the floor beneath him, the two dead pterodactyls—their muscular bodies still twitching—Viola Burns and Lilly Bloodroot. Oddly, Lilly’s eyes began to grow as Asa looked at her. Now they looked to be the size of purple pool balls.

Has her skin always been that rubbery?
Each time she blinked, a thousand wrinkles moved throughout her face like ripples in a pond.

“Are you okay, Asa?” Viola asked him. He remembered the day that the Sharks had had
their first morning run. It had been Viola that he had run directly in front of before going deep into the jungle after Jen.
Were her hair follicles so thick back then? Or is something happening to her? Is she changing in some way?
Asa wondered. Each of Viola’s individual hairs was as thick as spaghetti noodles.

Lilly looked at Viola, then back at Asa. “We need to grab him and take him downstairs.”

              “Okay,” Viola replied.

             
Asa began to shriek. The two females moved towards him, arms outstretched. Their mouths were dripping black, thick liquid. Asa tried to run, but found that his feet were now nailed to the ground. He saw stakes going right through his shoes and into the tile.

             
Then, things began to get strange.

17

A Hungry Night

             
Asa was driving along White Bridge Road in Dritt, Texas, his hometown. He was fourteen again, except this time he knew about the Academy. He knew that he was going to have to go there, but didn’t know how to stop it.

             
On the radio some people were talking about the Wolf Flu on Dritt PM, the radio station that Robert King had bought for his son, who lived in the area. They spoke about all the major issues concerning the epidemic, but never mentioned Robert King. Most people only had negative things to say about him, and since the man was paying the bill, they didn’t want to make him mad. Without anything positive to say, the radio-people remained completely silent on the issue.

             
The old Volvo smelled like his mother; the cracked leather seats reminded him painfully of the parent he had lost to the Wolf Flu.

             
In the purple light of the moon, Asa could see that White Bridge Road was covered in corpses. They were all naked, intertwined like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. You couldn’t see the gravel underneath because of how dense the bodies were. All of them had jaundiced yellow eyes that glowed in the dark like children’s nightlights. Their skin was sallow, sagging. There were bags underneath their eyes.

             
Wolf Flu victims.

             
Driving over these bodies made the cabin of the car shake and jostled Asa up and down. He had a throbbing headache, and each bump was like driving a nail into his skull. He kept driving though. The crows were with him, watching him from the trees. There was one with a broken beak that he had seen before and would see again. But that wasn’t what would save him. There was someone else there, too. Someone watching him, holding the dog until just the right time.

             
And then, there were flashing lights. Red, blue, red, blue, red, blue.

             
The police car behind him was swerving. But it wasn’t really a police car; it just had those lights on top, and the word “Police” painted into the side. It was a bulldozer. The giant, metal wheels crushed the corpses underneath to nothingness so that when you drove over them, you wouldn’t notice as much. The exhaust pipe was sending out great billows of the same thick black smoke that had spilled into the Sharks Home Base in the Tropics.

             
Asa pulled over, and the police bulldozer stopped behind him. The engine stayed on, continuing to put off smoke, and Robert King stepped down the steps on the side of the machine.

             
He had an enormous smile on his face. His pupils weren’t just dilated, as Teddy’s had been lately, but now his entire eyeball was black. There was nothing but pupil in between his eyelids. It was unnerving because you never could know what he was looking at.

             
He wasn’t wearing police clothes, either. He wore a small piece of yellow-white cloth that wrapped around his waist and covered his genitals and buttocks. His legs and torso were bare. On his chest, the word “Police” was written in a bloody, dripping series of lacerations. Below that were the words, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” On his waist, above the cloth, was a police belt, tightened so that his pale belly overhung it. On the belt there was a gun, and then a series of syringes loaded with the red serum he had injected into his foot that day in his office. Robert King was wearing sandals. The corpses groaned as he walked over them. They were dead, but many of them still held a bit of air in their lungs. As his feet compressed them, this air was squeezed out and ran over the vocal cords of the dead, making groaning noises. Atop his head was a crown of thorns.

             
Then, the smoke from the bulldozer came into Asa’s cabin. It was thick and impenetrable. When it cleared, he was in the passenger seat of a police car with Officer Harold Kensing. He was back on White Bridge, but the corpses weren’t there anymore. Harold Kensing was holding a gun to Asa’s head. Asa thought,
you can’t be real. I buried you out on Mount Two at the beginning of this semester.

             
Harold’s neck was bruised. He was already rotting.

             
“They’re making me, Asa,” tears streamed down his face. “God, forgive me. Please forgive me.” His eyes looked at a small bobble head of Jesus on the cross, mounted on his dashboard. Except, instead of the figurine being of Jesus, the face was that of Robert King’s. The entire eyeballs were as dark as the most vacant regions of outer space.

             
There was a sound from the side of the car, Officer Kensing opened the door, and a dog was standing on the pavement. The dog was enormous. It had thick, matted hair and wore no collar. Its teeth sunk into Harold Kensing’s arm and pulled him to the ground.

             
But there’s something else.

             
Those eyes. The night the dog saved me. They seemed…different. Like human eyes that had been implanted into a canine’s skull. But it wasn’t a canine’s skull, really, was it? No. The head was much too big, and protruded on the top. Like it held a human brain in there, too.

             
Whose dog was that? Someone must have sent it. And, with all he knew about gene-altering technology, he now thought that someone must have created it.

             
The black smoke filled the cabin again, and the scene changed once more.

             
Things were now happening at an insane pace. It was as though a fire hose was shooting bits of information into his brain faster than he could take it. It wasn’t like he saw anything, or heard anything. One moment the information wasn’t in his brain, and then the next moment it was. This is what he learned:

             
Somehow, he knew that if you died in a certain place (he thought it had something to do with medicine, or the medical field), you would not cease to exist, but you’d fall on a tarp, and a bell would jingle above your head. And Santa Clause would be there…something about Santa Clause…

             
But then this thing was gone. The black smoke again.

             
He awoke and it was warm. He was sweaty and feverish; his head still pounded. There was a fire flickering nearby. Lilly Bloodroot was dampening his forehead with a wet hand. Her purple eyes were beautiful in the firelight. When she saw that he had awoken, she smiled, making dimples on the sides of her lips. Asa saw that her mouth was no longer dripping black. There were multiple gashes in her suit and chest from where the pterodactyl had swiped at her. “He’s awake. I told you he’d wake up.”