They were going to throw me to the ground!
If that didn’t kill me outright, it certainly would get me more than half-way there. I dug in my heels, but the other zombies launched into action. They saw my defiance and grabbed ahold of me to pull.
I had to steal control of these zombies. Did I know if I could do it? Absolutely not, but I would die if I didn’t try. I had to do it…I had to…
My power reached out, but I nervously yanked it back. It thrashed inside me. My arcanawantedthe zombies. I held it down, though. Fear turned my veins to ice. Not because of the sheer drop beneath me. No, I was terrified of myself.
This was it. I couldn’t even use my power to protect myself. I was too afraid of even that.
This unearthly power would pull on the life force of my friend, of the detective, and everyone else in the building. It would drain them of everything that kept them alive. I couldn’t…I wouldn’t…
“Oh, no you don’t!” Maddox shouted right as a hand grabbed the back of my shirt.
He yanked me back. Skeletal fingers dug into the soft flesh of my arms, but Maddox’s pull made their rotting bodies give way. A pair of hands, completely detached from their bodies, still clung to my arms as Maddox picked me up and carried me away.
“Take her somewhere else,” Cerri commanded. “Don’t worry about me. They want her. Once you leave, you won’t have to worry about me.”
Maddox hesitated. My arcana still slithered inside me. It tried to break past my hold on it. Over and over, it sent out feelers, little fingers in search of a spark of life. The skeleton hands on my arms clenched harder, and my arcana leapt excitedly.
My arcana twisted and lunged for the hands. Though I tried to pull it back, a bit of that cold power found its way out and claimed the hands. I gasped as my senses expanded. Though the hands had no skin to feel, I could somehow still sense what they were touching.
I felt the folds of my shirt and the tension in my muscle as they gripped me. My arcana seemed to laugh triumphantly while I trembled in fear.
“It’s going to be okay,” Maddox said to reassure me even though there was no conviction in his voice.
I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t afraid of the zombies.
I was afraid ofmyself.
The hands leapt off me. They weren’t under my control, not really. My arcana worked without me, like a creature surviving on instinct alone. The hands skittered across the floor and threw themselves at their former bodies. I turned my face away from the zombies clamoring after us, so I couldn’t see what the hands did to protect me.
I just wanted out of here. I wanted away from my own power and the way it threatened to hurt those around me. Already, I could hear Maddox’s breath becoming labored. I doubted it was from carrying me. I must have pulled on his life force to take control of the hands.
If he was struggling from a feat as small as that, then I didn’t want to think of how badly I would hurt everyone else if I took control of all the zombies.
Useless. I was useless.
No. I was actually a danger to everyone around me.
Maddox
I didmy best to ignore the horrors around me. They couldn’t be real. I refused to believe anything I saw. I was in the middle of an unholy hallucination from lack of sleep. Yeah, that was a good explanation. The alternative didn’t make sense.
Zombies.
Real-life-zombies dragged their rotting bodies across the floor towards me. They reached out with slippery bone-hands. I kicked the nearest one and cringed when the bones went flying in every direction. They weren’t all that well put together.
No. They weren’t real.
They couldn’t be real.
I carried Addie out of the building, much to my own surprise. Even with her extra weight added to mine, my footing was sure. I didn’t miss a step the whole way down the stairs.
“Where can we go?” I asked, breathless.
Addie said nothing. She buried her face in my shirt and whimpered.
I couldn’t blame her. A bunch of dead things had grabbed her with the intention of throwing her out the window. What I didn’t understand was why she didn’t fight back. Had I not caught her, the zombies would have thrown her down three stories.