The Academy: Book 2 (36 page)

             
Mike Plode was the calmest of all the students. (
except,
Asa thought,
maybe Lilly Bloodroot is calmer. It’s hard to tell though, with those purple eyes. She sometimes stares off into space like she doesn’t know what’s going on, or like she can see things that others can’t
). Boom Boom began, “It sounds like we can’t stay here, guarding this place. The Boss’s point about our need to go out and find food is convincing: many of us, especially the most mutated of us, will starve if we camp out here. So, we’ll need to go out and find food. Or,” he said, getting up and going towards the window. He looked out onto the horizon. There was a thin strip of metal that ran vertically up the window, and the shadow of it split his face in half. “We can simply attack. Right now. How far away do you think that base out there is? Five miles? Ten miles? Fifteen at the most, I’d say. Either way, we could make the distance in less than three hours at a jog, even the slowest among us. When we all get to the nearest base, we could fight with those inside, and hopefully steal their KEE. Then, we could give it to the fastest among us and have them sprint it to our Home Base, and be out of this Task in a matter of hours, not days.”

             
“Won’t that leave our base empty, though, Mike?” Bruce asked.

             
“Yes and no,” Boom Boom replied. “Our base will technically be empty for a time, but if we go fast enough, no one will have a chance to take our KEE back to their own base. I guarantee you that all of the other teams will sit around, talking strategy for an hour before they get moving. Even if a team comes and grabs our KEE while we’re gone, we will have returned with another team’s KEE by then, making ours disappear, and taking us out of the game.”

             
“Can’t we just stay here?” Alice, a Fishie, asked. Everyone looked at her. Her voice was shaky; she appeared to be in an emotional state between great sorrow and intense terror. “I mean, we could go out and hunt, but do we
want
to try to steal another team’s KEE? This Task is only very dangerous if everyone decides to try and eliminate each other. If every team just stays around their bases and doesn’t attack anyone else, we’d be relatively safe.”

             
“That won’t happen, though,” Viola Burns spoke up. For the first time, Asa noticed that she had greenish-purple metallic fingernail polish on. It glimmered in the light. “I know that there are some students, in my semester at least, that will not want to sit around and wait to be attacked.”

She’s thinking about Stridor,
Asa thought. He remembered how aggressive he was on the back of King Mountain last year, of how Stridor had taken charge. When the undead stormed the lodge the Fishies were staying in and opened fire, Stridor had covered himself with blood so that they thought he was a corpse. Then, he attacked, stealing a weapon and opening fire himself. Stridor was a leader. Asa suspected that Stridor would be on the offensive soon, whether he had a team behind him or not. He was the kind of person that made things happened. Sitting there, thinking of Stridor’s height, his musculature and his discolored wine-stained skin made Asa afraid of running into him while in the jungle. The thought of Stridor was almost as concerning as those giant, bloody carcasses on the grass far below them.

What could kill such a thing?

             
“I agree with Viola. And, if we start off quickly enough, that would give us the element of surprise,” Bruce said. “And, we could even leave eight people here to guard the place, just as a presence. We could split up.”

             
“True,” Roxanne agreed.

             
“OH MY GOD, will you two shut the hell up? Are you kidding with me? Really? Thinkin’ that I’m gonna listen to you two when Bruce’s plan ran our Winggame team into the ground just ‘bout an hour ago? And then there was Roxy, right beside him, just noddin’ her head. ‘Ayuh, ninety-five sounds like a good play to run, Bruce, ayuh.’ Makes me sick. Here’s a new rule for the team: Roxanne and Bruce don’t talk. How ‘bout that one?” Stan’s face was red, and his little hands were clenched into fists below his muscular forearms. Janice was by his side, beaming at him.

             
“Really mature, Stan. Seriously, your anger and cursing is helpful,” Bruce said with a harsh sarcastic tone.

             
“Maybe you don’t care about what happened in the Winggame match, but I do! I can only lose
two games, damn it!”
Stan appeared to be in a frenzy. He looked on the verge of tears and on the verge of killing someone all at the same time. “
They’re gonna kill me, don’t you get it!? Don’t you care?
”

             
“
I do care!
I care about this team and I want them to win. I don’t like the way it feels to lose, so don’t tell me…”

             
“CALM DOWN!” Roxanne hollered.

             
“Does being a loser feel worser than knowing the girl you love is dating a Multiplier? Does losin’ feel worser than that?” Stan asked.

             
Bruce stammered, not knowing how to respond. His face flushed scarlet.

             
“It’s ‘worse,’ not ‘worser,’ you idiot!” Asa didn’t know why he said it, the words slipped out. He was so scared, and this emotion spilled into anger at Stan for taking such a cheap shot at Bruce’s attraction to Roxanne. Stan’s eyes found Asa, crazy and deeply green. “AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, SO SHUT UP!”

             
It happened so fast and so slow at the same time. Stan picked up his chair from behind him in a blurring speed, and hurled it directly at Asa. It tumbled end over end through the air in a straight line. Asa fell to the floor, like a baseball player in the batter’s box dodging a stray pitch. It was only when he was on the ground, watching the chair soar over him, that he saw the danger in what was happening. Behind Asa, there was a clear shot towards a nearby window and the chair was moving very fast.

             
Pterosaurs.

             
Asa reached out his hands to try to stop the chair, but it was too late. It continued on, and shattered through the thin glass as though there wasn’t a barrier at all. The glass crumpled, and the chair fell to the ground far below.

             
eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

             
The siren began to blare, and Asa realized that the tone that called the pterosaurs was actually caused by the glass breaking, not by pulling the ropes downstairs. Those ropes broke the glass, which then caused the tone.

The sound was incredibly loud. Just yards away from him in the high ceilinged roomed, he could see by the intensity with which Roxanne’s mouth was moving that she was screaming something, but he couldn’t hear what it was.

              eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

             
Asa was sure that the sound could be heard for miles around. It was hurting his ears. On the other side of the room, Stan was making a run for the staircase.

             
eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

             
Stan had taken three steps when the siren stopped and the room was so quiet that all Asa could hear was a ringing sound in his ears. For some unexplainable reason, the Sharks did not move for a moment, but remained as still as possible. The opening where the window had been broken blew hot, humid air into the room.

             
Then, there came a much worse noise than a siren from above them: The clacking of talons on hard metal as something above them moved.

             
Clack clack. Clack clack clack.

             
It was a heavy noise that sent vibrations through the tile that Asa lay upon.

There’s something on the roof.
Something very big.

The nervousness in the room peaked, and Asa felt a drop of sweat run to the tip of his nose. He was breathing shallowly, trying to be as still and silent as possible. His heart was fluttering like a hummingbird trapped in a shoebox.

A nonsensical chain of thought came into his mind as his ears strained to hear the pterosaur on the roof take off and swoop down into the room:
What would it be like to be eaten alive by such an animal? Chewed twice and then swallowed. Would the jaws kill me, or would I slide down the hot, mucus-covered stinking throat of the great bird, with merely a broken hip? Would I make a splash as I fell into the stomach acid? Would the acid eat away at me quickly enough to end my life, or would I suffocate to death? While I was in there, acid eating my flesh off, would I feel the weight of a fellow teammate fall on top of me, still twitching but dead? Would I feel the stomach muscles contract around me, pulling me further down the gastrointestinal tract?

Every student (including Jen, who usually looked so tough) was wide eyed and so paralyzed with fear that they could not move. Seconds ticked by. There were no more sounds from the roof. The humidity and heat were stifling.

Just as Asa’s heart began to calm down, Stan did the equivalent of shaking the shoebox with the hummingbird in it: He began to laugh. It wasn’t the kind of laugh you would emit while watching a sitcom at home. No. This was the kind of howling, jackal-like, hitching, crying, miserably hard laughter that children produce when they’re being tickled too much. He couldn’t breathe he was laughing so hard. Finally, “You-you-you guys! HAHAHA! You guys were so
scared
! And-and-and…”

He stopped laughing, and the smile was wiped off his face as though
a medical doctor had just told him he had cancer.

Clack clack. Clack clack clack.

And then a scraping sound, and then a
WHOOSH!

Several students screamed as the animals broke through the glass and spilled inside. Asa would have screamed also, but he was too scared and no sound came from his dry throat.

In the middle of the room stood the pterosaur, its size unmistakable.
Its children must be the size of Blood Canaries
. The thing’s beak was shaped like a seagull’s, except it was black and about the size of a dining room table. The pterosaur’s talons clacked on the tile as it landed, it bent forward, and let out a scream so full of rage and hatred that Asa thought,
this is what a demon sounds like.
At the sheer volume and pitch of the cry, what was left of the windows around the room shattered. The inside of the animal’s mouth was jammed full of teeth, all of them at least the width and length of Asa’s hand. Its tongue and throat were pink.

The pterosaur began to sprint forward on four legs, like a quadruped. Asa examined the animal’s movements and saw that it was using its back two legs to propel itself forward. The upper portion of the animal’s well-muscled wings served as front legs, as long as a giraffe’s. The thick membranous part of the wing that caught wind and made it
possible for the animal to fly hung useless as the pterosaur sprinted with amazing speed through the room.

             
It was a miserable looking creature. The only area of the pterosaur’s body that had feathers was the top of its head; these feathers were long and green—they stood straight up, like a Native American headdress. The rest of the animal’s body was pink, soft, and raw. There were sores that looked like enormous pimples covering the animal’s entire chest and legs. Some were draining blood, while others were oozing white pus. The stench was unbearable. The rest of the animal’s skin was white, cracked, and so dry that it bled with any movement.

             
The eyes were angry, and a bright yellow like lanterns.

             
Asa saw an enormous electronic collar around the animal’s neck.

             
Flanking this goliath were pterodactyls. As Robert King had mentioned earlier, these were not as large as the ones depicted in movies. They were each the size of a Great Dane dog, but appeared to be exhibiting the ‘double muscle’ mutation seen in genetically altered livestock. Their shoulders were as hard and big as bowling balls beneath their white, scaly, reptilian skin. Their chests were wide with muscular striations and thick, beating veins. It was as though someone tried to pack all of the muscles of a horse into an animal the size of a large dog. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the creatures.

             
Five pterodactyls landed around the pterosaur, and, just as the pterosaur had done, began to run like miniature bulls, using the top ends of their wings as front legs. They were disturbingly fast, and made odd grunting noises through their tiny nostril slits. They, like the pterosaur, had mouths full of shark-like teeth. Shock collars were wrapped around their necks.

             
Asa lay on the floor, watching these monsters swarm in upon the Sharks. They moved with such speed that it was disturbing. Panicking, Asa’s eyes searched the room for a way out, or for something that he could use to defend himself. He saw the window close by, and thought about jumping out of it. He could then glide to the ground, under the fifteen foot barrier that the shock collars prohibited these flying, prehistoric creatures from going through. But, did he really think that he could outfly these animals that had been naturally selected due to superior flying abilities in prehistoric times? He did not. And, he recalled that Robert King’s hologram had guaranteed that they wouldn’t be able to outfly either the pterosaurs or the pterodactyls. What then?

             
My drill!

             
Asa’s armband drill seemed like his best, surest weapon. He reached his right hand over to his armband, and pulled up on the fabric. Usually when he did this, a hole emerged that he could put his thumb through. After putting his thumb inside, he would have the ability to make a fist and activate the drill. Except this time, the hole in the fabric did not automatically emerge as he tugged on it.

             
Asa looked down, and to his horror remembered that his armband had been switched out along with his suit at the beginning of this Task. This one hadn’t been programmed to work as a drill.

             
A scream broke Asa’s concentration on the drill, and he looked up, into the room.

             
Jen was the closest to the pterosaur, and was sprinting towards the stairs. The giant beast’s shadow completely engulfed her as it ran forward on its wings and back legs. The ceiling above was as high as a gymnasium’s, but the pterosaur’s feathers atop its head still brushed the high surface. Asa’s brain couldn’t get over the size of the creature.

             
The pterosaur’s lantern eyes locked onto Jen; her dark blond hair whipped behind her head with her strides. Juan Chavez, another Fishie ran beside her, also moving towards the stairs.

             
It felt as though someone had poured a pitcher of ice water into Asa’s stomach. With a perverse terror, he saw the pterosaur’s jaws open, and its leg muscle’s flex as it prepared to leap at Jen.

             
For a tenth of a second, Jen’s eyes flittered over to the resurrected ancient creature. Her next step was faster than the others, fueled by adrenaline. But all the adrenaline in the world wouldn’t allow her to outrun such a thing as the pterosaur.

             
The pterosaur’s muscular thighs contracted, springing the animal forward, towards Jen. Its mouth was open so wide that the jaws were ten feet apart, ready to snap shut.

             
Then, Jen did something that showed unexpected ingenuity and callousness.
Or,
Asa thought,
perhaps it was an accident.

             
As the pterosaurs gaping, stinking mouth moved forward to grab Jen, she dove. She collided right into Juan’s legs, making him flip over into the air. With the speed at which he was running, he was easy to trip.

             
Asa thought that Juan never had enough time to realize what had actually happened to him before he died. One minute, he was sprinting towards the stairs, and then the next, Jen had dove at his legs and he was tumbling into the air, above where Jen was situated on the floor. This maneuver put Juan in the air right inside of the pre-historic creature’s open mouth. The jaws snapped shut with a sickening crunch. Asa saw, disturbed, that the prehistoric bird did, in fact, chew Juan only twice before swallowing him.

             
Asa was confident, though, that the initial snap of the animal’s jaw had killed Juan.
He didn’t even scream. Alive one moment, and then just gone. He didn’t see it coming.

             
While the pterosaur was swallowing Jen’s classmate, she reached the stairs and began to sprint down.

A great deal of blood had been spilled on the tile. Asa glanced around and saw that every single pterodactyl had dark red clotting stains around its mouth like heavily applied lipstick. Several of Asa’s teammates were laying facedown on the floor, not moving. The pterodactyls were chasing the students down, locking their jaws on the back of their necks, and then spinning and jerking until the humans weren’t fighting anymore. Immediately after killing a student, the muscular reptiles sprinted off to catch another student and jerk them to the ground. They took no break to feast. It was as though they were purposefully piling up the bodies so that they’d have a great
meal for later.

Stan and Janice were nowhere to be seen.

To Asa’s left, a pterodactyl leapt at Lilly Bloodroot. Her purple eyes looked so dazed, and reacted slowly to the approaching reptile with the bloody jaws. But her body reacted fast. As the pterodactyl tried to leap onto her, she fell on her back, so that the animal dove over her. Lilly then planted her feet on the pterodactyl’s chest and shot the murderous animal into the air.

This would have been a good plan if the attacker hadn’t been one of the most adept flyers in history. Its wings expended and in one flap, it was on Lilly Bloodroot. It tried to bite her in the face, but Lilly’s strong, mutated hands held the muzzle at bay for a moment.

I must prove myself. These people must trust me,
Asa thought.

Asa was on his feet and sprinting towards the pterodact
yl when it lifted its right claw and swung down upon Lilly’s chest, drawing blood. She yelped, but her grip did not loosen.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Asa saw Viola Burns also approaching to help.
I have no idea what we’ll do when we get there, though. This is like running into a burning building without a hose.

Not thinking, acting on instinct, Asa jumped onto the pterodactyl’s back. The reptile hissed in rage. Even though he was in a near death situation, Asa couldn’t help but be in awe at the musculature of the pterodactyl beneath him. The beast’s body felt like marble with a thin, tight layer of snakeskin pulled over it. Asa had the reptile in a chokehold and was squeezing as tightly as he possibly could in an attempt to either restrict the animal’s airflow or the supply of blood to its brain. No matter how hard he squeezed, he felt as though he was making no progress. Every inch of the creature was solid; trying to close its airway was like trying to squeeze a cannon ti
ght enough that its barrel shut.

The pterodactyl reached back its front claw and slashed Lilly’s chest a second time, ripping through her suit and flesh. Again, Lilly cried out, but her grip on the bloody muzzle didn’t waver. Over a white, scaly shoulder Asa could see that the jaws were now closer to Lilly’s neck. Beneath Asa, he could feel the muscles of the cold, scaly creature trembling with force; it was doing everything in its power to kill Lilly.

Viola Burns approached the hissing pterodactyl from head on. Asa was glad to see that they had backup, but concerned:
How can she help? She’s only going to get herself killed.
Cries and more hissing could be heard throughout the room, but Asa was too concentrated on the pterodactyl below him to care.