Chapter 22 #2
The mighty oak has fallen over mere feet before the gates, trapping all the dead within the confines of the graveyard.
They whine and groan, clambering on top of one another, trying to get out.
Trying to reach the battle still being waged on the brightly lit pitch.
But they’re immobile, spinning their wheels.
Sophia and I exchange a look of exhaustion and pain and triumph before we begin to hack away at the masses.
My daggers cut through rotten flesh and drying bones, sagging throats and empty guts.
I swallow down my dry heaves. Sophia dry heaves at the stench.
But we’re making progress, taking them out with the kind of tactile precision only hunters have.
I’m about to tell Sophia we’ve done enough here and should go to the pitch to help when all the lights wink out.
Every single one on campus.
The lanterns in the cemetery, the fluorescent stadium lights from the lacrosse field, the little lamps that line the cobblestone path outside. The entire school is drowned in suffocating night.
There are no visible stars amid the too-thick fog.
But the moon hangs in the sky like it’s weighing it down, wider and yellower than I’ve ever seen it.
The darkness only amplifies its enormity—imposing, punishing as it dominates the night.
With the campus drenched in liquid black, my other senses perk up.
My nose fills with the earthy scent of mushrooms and moss mingled with the musk of rotting human flesh. An owl hoots rhythmically above.
I’ve spent half my life prowling in the darkness, hunting things that make the nighttime their playground.
Still, it hasn’t hardened me to that intrinsic human pull toward light and warmth and people.
The groaning sounds of creatures that want to devour me, their fingernails scraping like claws, the glowing eyes that blink and skitter in the brush…
My blood pumps too loudly in my ears and I have the humiliating instinct to reach for Sophia’s hand as if I’m five years old and she’s Nora or something.
And then the screaming stops.
And the moaning.
And the sound of metal slashing through old, worn flesh.
When the campus lights click back on, all the zombies are dead bodies once again. Piled on the ground, sloping atop one another at strange, unnatural angles. And Dean Driscoll, walking toward us—
I nearly jump a foot in the air at the sight.
He’s covered in cobweb and ash, and he’s got a serious gash down his tattooed arm, which he’s stanched with fabric ripped from his shirt. He’s holding what looks like the remains of a crushed human skull. The object of origin, I’m sure.
He takes in the felled tree. “Good work.”
“Thanks,” Sophia breathes. “It was Viv’s idea.”
“Some first month you kids are having.” Driscoll frowns, looking to the object in his hand, and then lets the skull crumble to the ground, wipes human remains and blood on his shirt, and extends the hand to each of us. “We’re lucky to have you both. You saved lives tonight.”
I get the sense his big, scary warlock thing might be at odds with a quiet, lonely, perhaps even awkward man.
“Dean Driscoll,” a shrill voice calls from the other side of the tree.
Professor Lisette, wrapped in a cloak, climbs over the fallen oak and the mounds of corpses with a twist of her mouth. “Christ above,” she mutters.
“It’s over,” Dean Driscoll tells Lisette. “Viv and Sophia here saw to that.”
Lisette narrows her eyes at us, and suddenly I feel like I’m in grade school, about to be sent to the principal’s office. The way she looks at me…A strange tension coils in my body. It’s too familiar. Being a disappointment.
“Time for you girls to leave,” Lisette instructs, face grim under the dim lantern light.
Sophia’s face slackens. “But—”
“Go,” Lisette snaps at her. “You’ve done enough.”
“Professor,” Driscoll says in warning.
But she’s not deterred. She wraps her cloak tighter around herself. “Both of you girls, back to the pitch. Help bury the dead. Or…rebury.”
“Yes, Professor,” we mumble.
I drag Sophia with me until we’re stomping down the cobblestone path under that enormous harvest moon, back toward the lacrosse pitch.
Students are crying, whispering, limping in the darkness back to their dorms. In the distance I can see the glow of healing pixie magic, professors in pajamas and coats, students helping one another up or icing injuries.
No body bags, but I’m not convinced yet every student made it through the night.
Before I can even open my mouth to ask about Elliot, Sophia spots him.
“There.” All the breath leaves her in a rush.
His white uniform is coated in blood and guts, his caramel-brown hair streaked with sweat and dirt, but he’s eyeing Sophia and me with pure relief, and I’m overwhelmed with the same exact feeling.
Another person I never want to see get hurt. Fantastic.
We’re halfway across the field to him when Sophia mutters, “Lisette’s got such a stick up her ass. We saved people tonight.”
My stomach twists. “There’s something so strange about her…”
“Yeah, what a bitch she is.”
“Thank god,” Elliot sighs, pulling Sophia into a hug that lifts her off her feet. I’m smiling up at them both when suddenly Elliot pulls me into the hug too. My ankles dangle above the ground as my cheek is squished into his chest.
“Ouch,” I mutter. Something is burning my skin. “Wait, stop, Elliot—” I struggle against them until Elliot releases us both.
Sophia’s eyes widen. “What? What is it?”
“Shit,” I hiss, fumbling for my blades. “Shit.”
I yank my blades out from their sheaths at my ribs and my thigh. They’re scalding hot, the skin beneath already blistering. I let them clang to the ground and notice a faint burnished glow radiating from them, the grass beneath burning to ash on impact.
Elliot sucks in a ragged breath. “Does that happen a lot?”
I shake my head, still rubbing my burned skin. “No. Never.”