Chương 9: It's All About Food

Over a dozen oozing, skinless horrors charged at speeds that would make Usain Bolt sit up and take notice, then suddenly slowed. Not by much; they still moved like long-distance runners on a sugar rush, eating up the distance between us at an enormous rate, reaching out with glistening, crimson, nail-less hands to grasp at their favorite dish, namely us.

But they were just slow enough for me to sidestep their mad dash, pull back then punch at the leftmost horror's jaw with my leg, hip, back and arm muscles behind the blow. I had no idea how much I weighed after the recent growth spurts and neither would anyone else, ever, but the monster loomed larger still and probably expected to bowl me over then get to "unwrapping" its unhappy meal.

When it folded around my fist like it was a solid steel pole then explosively bounced it had to be very confused, assuming it could even think with its lower face exploded and neck half-torn. Crimson sludge slid off my fist as I turned, friction and adhesive forces on anything except my feet greatly reduced, but still my skin itched and looked mildly irritated by the brief contact.

Suddenly, an incredibly bright pink explosion stabbed into the corner of my right eye, followed a split-second later by a honking sound so loud my head rung like a gong. Staggering mid-step, I toppled before I could chop at the downed monster to sever its neck and take it out of the fight permanently, my nose ramming against concrete and bringing even more tears to my aching eyes. Fortunately, so did the monsters.

I still had no idea how undead beings saw or heard, but they, too could be brought low by a pink flashbang. Blinking the afterimage seared into my retinas seemed to work and after a headshake or two my balance came back as well. The monsters seemed significantly more affected for some reason despite being able to shrug off major wounds, as if they were vulnerable to the flashbang... or as if I wasn't. Lights, sounds, those were forces too, weren't they?

Tommy was bashing a monster's head in with his purple-glowing bat as I got up, the weapon flashing with every impact and turning a handful of monster flesh to ash on contact. Staggering to my sole downed opponent as he moved on to a second monster and started wailing on it I kicked out, Force Adjustment and Proximakinesis working together to sever the damaged neck and send the eyeless, skinless head flying hundreds of feet away.

That made my foot start itching like from an annoying rash, a reminder that my shoes had been lost some time before. With Force Adjustment and a high Might attribute making every surface seem softer I hadn't noticed. The moment the monster died and I enjoyed the rush of energy pushing me into another power-up, every single monster recovered from Tommy's disabling skill at the same time. Backpedaling was not quite enough to avoid the closest two from jumping me and I had to block a sweeping blow with my left arm.

The flayed thing grabbed on... then Tommy tried for a second flashbang. The three or four seconds that followed were me blindly flailing against the monster that had fallen on top of me, finally killing it by shoving an arm all the way through its skull. The suddenly limp body was thrown off and its corrosive slime failed to stick, but the poison-ivy-like itch had already escalated into a painful jellyfish sting. Tommy was having his own problems.

Unlike the first time he'd used it, not all of the monsters had been knocked down. Three of them seemed to have powered through the effect and were assaulting the too-tall, too pretty boy from all sides. A pinkish-orange eyesore of a glow shone around him up to a range of ten feet, causing the undead to move eerily sluggishly, as if underwater, while at the same time speeding him up by a similar amount. How many powers did he have?!

Even with them though, corrosive goo clung to him from several blows that had already landed. He was tougher and stronger than me when I wasn't cheating with powers, but even so those had to hurt. More than half the remaining flayed things charged at me, toothless jaws gaping and corrosive saliva sizzling as it dripped on the ground, so with a mighty "Eeep!" I turned around and fled.

The hungry hungry horrors followed at my heels as I reached the back of the primary school building then ran down its length, zig-zagging as I went. Instead of avoiding the relatively few normal zombies milling around between the building and the perimeter wall I downed them with a single skull-crushing punch each.

Each "kill" was a bit more of what was probably magic flowing through me, a small step closer to another power-up I really didn't have time to look into, but at least there wouldn't be more nearby zombies turning into flayed horrors when we killed the existing ones. It occurred to me as I led a bunch of monsters on a not-so-merry chase that I could easily get over the school's wall with my powers. At only twenty feet it would barely be a speed bump for a gal that probably had a bigger vertical leap than that.

The urge, the idea to just fly away and leave problems no teenager should have had to deal with behind was oh so tempting for just a moment. But seeing me do it would make the same thing occur to the monsters, and even if the city had the same or worse horrors if the magic light show a day before was an indication, any innocents these monsters would kill while following me would be on my head.

Then there was Mandy, my best friend with her quirky nail polish choices, love of cute things, and sometimes annoyingly meek attitude I'd been trying to break her out of, still lost somewhere in the monster-infested nightmare our school had become. And Jerry too, I guess. The know-it-all had saved me once or twice, debts were owed. Reaching the far edge of the main building, I turned around to face the flayed zombies.

I looked at their dripping, disturbing, deformed mugs, icky skin-melting ooze and mindless hunger for my flesh. One out of ten, I much preferred music. Giving them a little wave while putting the newly-gained attribute point into Agility, I bolted. Running while my very body changed felt not so much awkward as like a split-second from taking a tumble and eating dirt. Like the awkward month after that growth spurt at thirteen, all gangly uncertainty before the Boob Fairy's visit times a thousand.

Knowing that a fall would result in being dog-piled and eaten alive was fantastic motivation though, and powers turned a loping gait that would make most Olympic sprinters green with envy into a blink-and-you'd-miss-it dash that left my famished admirers in the dust. Less than twenty seconds; that's how long the whole chase had lasted, though no idea exactly how long because my perception of time was completely shot from both adrenaline and superpowers.

There had to be something off with the sprint back, both because of how I'd left the monsters so far behind and from how the remaining ones around Tommy seemed to be moving in slow motion. Since it was to my benefit though I left it for later and got to helping the older boy before it was too late. In this short absence he'd already taken first-degree chemical burns all over his arms and a far larger seared and still smoking spot on his back where one of the monsters must have tried to take a bite from behind.

He'd also lost his shirt, now melted and torn around his feet, exposing the kind of musculature only Conan played by Arnold Schwarzenegger could rival. Which was totally irrelevant and mentioned for, ah, academic reasons. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Running up to the hole the monsters had cracked into the main building's side, I picked one of the more solid-looking pieces, one more concrete than brick.

It must have weighed dozens upon dozens of pounds but only seemed as heavy as a water bottle in my hands, a hefty weight that felt just right. Swinging it at the back of a flayed freak's head in less than the blink of my sped-up eye felt great. A good half of it exploding into fragments along with the monster's head was even better, the rush of adrenaline, satisfaction and magic making me want to laugh.

Two skinless things turned around to see what had decapitated their pack mate, slow like awkward couch potatoes trying to exercise for the first time. Grabbing my new weapon from the piece of rebar exposed by half its mass shattering, I danced inside the closest monster's reach and swung it like a two-handed club. A better grip and less awkward shape made up for the loss of mass, the remaining concrete breaking apart as it crushed the eyeless flayed head like a watermelon struck by a sledgehammer.

That left me with just three feet of bent rebar and another monster within reach so I impaled it through the neck then twisted until its spine popped. No painfully searing impact, very little corrosive goop actually falling on me, three dead monsters. Winning felt awesome... which was why the group of monsters I'd managed to lose earlier happened to turn around the corner that very moment. Tommy was already killing his fourth monster with what looked like crimson lightning - seriously, how many skills did he have?

- so there were just seven more of them to deal with.

"Maya, eyes!" His voice sounding too deep and drawn out, the idiot actually signaled me what he was about to do so I turned away and blocked my eyes and ears with my hands for good measure. The pink flashbang detonated for the third time, rattling my bones but otherwise leaving me unharmed, less a hammer blow to the head, more an abrupt shove. The monsters didn't fare as well, their charge turning into a disorganized tangle of limbs as they lost both sight and balance.

The whole point of drawing them away, other that winning the time to deal with the other half, had been to get them away from the spreading energy of the kills and prevent them from growing stronger mid-fight. It seemed to have worked, at least in part, because they were only a little less affected by the third blinding pinkness than the second. Tommy and I went to town on their flayed asses, flesh-disintegrating bat and stabby, super-fast piece rebar reducing two necks each into mincemeat.

Unfortunately, with the extra time afforded to me through Forced Acceleration and boosted Agility I could see them growing a little larger, a little less human with each of our own kills. The energy empowering us as well was the only consolation, though it seemed to be slowing down little by little, taking longer for the next power-up.

Three twisted forms of skinless muscle, bone and corrosive ooze stood up, towering over us like guys with serious gigantism, arms long enough to almost touch the ground like a gorilla's, heads elongating to something almost serpentine. Their ooze was so dark red it looked like molten tar and where it dripped into concrete it burned like a coal held against soft wood. Tommy's bat came up and a pinkish-red beam struck one of the three horrors straight in the chest.

Instead of toppling, it briefly staggered, taking only a step back.

"Shit," the older boy said and I agreed wholeheartedly.

"We should-" The monsters charged. They were still no faster than before but their reach was longer and the first swipe almost took my head off. Rolling aside from a downwards punch that cracked concrete, I discovered the second complication the enemy's new size brought to the fight; their neck was too far up to easily reach. Deciding to risk it, I put everything into launching the piece of rebar like a javelin.

Force Adjustment did not increase just my own strength; it applied to every force to or from me and with time enough for one good, long swing turned the metal rod into an improvised missile. It flew too fast to see and cored through monster's head, the same one Tommy had staggered. Energy burst like a river breaking through a dam in a storm, kicking me way beyond the next power-up. It was also distracting, letting a too-long arm nail me in the solar plexus in an explosion of agony.

There was a moment of blackness and the next thing I saw was the same monster looming over me, already punching down. Frantically dodging between its legs sent stabs of burning pain through my guts, something obviously wrong there. Twenty feet away, a yelling Tommy was blasting his dance partner with pink beam after pink beam, staggering them and stealing just enough time for a flesh-burning swing of his bat every second or third blast.

I was thinking "good" when one of his bazillion skills finally blew the monster's head off its shoulders... and my own opponent grew. The kick caught me by surprise and hurled me again into the wall, the monster having grown faster in addition to larger. Something more cracked and pain shot up my leg with every step. I tried hitting back but had no weapon, accumulating injuries had slowed me down, my reach was shorter and the flayed horror was stronger.

A punch cracked my jaw, the taste of blood from an accidentally bitten tongue filling my mouth, then another caught my head between it and the wall, making me see stars. Before the monster could kill me I directed any points left into the Might attribute, then a too-bright blast from somewhere beyond got too close to my head and shocked all fight out of me for a few seconds. Trying to blink away the dizziness, I only saw three Tommys getting the shit kicked out of them by an even larger number of monsters.

Had I lost time? Leaning against the cracked wall helped with getting upright but did nothing to help with my several injuries and only reducing my weight to a fraction of normal let me stand properly... or at all. Tommy was losing; the last monster was simply too strong for him to beat in a straight fight and when he died the beast would grow more. What could I do about it though? In my condition I couldn't even run, not against a monster that had sped up in its last growth spurt.

Then my gaze landed on something that had a tiny chance of making a difference. I didn't think about it; if I did, I'd realize just how crazy the plan was and abandon it out of sheer self-preservation. Calling it a plan was a gross exaggeration; it was closer to a last-second, hail Mary, do-or die stupidity with only a single reason it might work. The monster had grown faster - a lot faster. Stronger too.

But just like the rest of us, there was only so much it could grow from a single burst of energy, even a big one from another evolved of its kind killed within reach. So I picked the bent piece of rebar from where it had dropped after my last kill with it and jumped. Leaping with a probably-broken leg was very painful. Landing on the monster's back as it pounded Tommy slowly to death was absolute agony, jostling all my injuries and slathering extra-strong corrosive goop on my arms and legs.

But I no longer cared about that. The monster bucked against the sudden weight, too long arms reaching behind its back to dislodge the annoyance. I didn't care about that either. With all the strength and physics fuckery my powers afforded me I put the piece of rebar over its throat, twisted it like a pretzel, and pulled at both ends. Inch-thick steel garotte; against monsters accept no substitute. My skin burned as if held in open flame.

Cracked ribs stabbed into squishy things that leaked something probably important. And when the monster grabbed my legs and tried to pull me off, the broken one felt like it had exploded. But I held on like I'd had struggled through insane practice hours with lungs burning and a stitch at my side, like through therapy after the accident, not giving up until I was good enough to join the team once more. If I was going to die, I'd take that fucking thing with me. In the end, I didn't have the strength to kill it.

A few seconds more and I'd have blacked out, then been eaten. But the monster did. In its rushed, near-mindless attempts to dislodge me it pulled too hard, adding its own strength to mine in the steel garotte and inadvertently tearing its own head off. An enormous rush of energy pushed against the pain...... then I dropped to the ground with the monster's corpse landing on me and blacked out.