This Is Not The End.

Chapter 8

The watch kept beeping. Jack and I stood protectively to Kai's side, trembling and thanking the heavens that I could actually move.

"Alice is that you?" the woman's head twitched with every beep, and she kept getting closer and closer. "Alice, my love? Are you there?"

I clenched my hands into fists, readying myself to take my knife's hilt in my fingers if I could only get them to move.

The woman kept coming closer, stumbling as she hit the guardrail but soon recovering as she worked out how to get her bare, bloodstained legs over and landing on the other side.

"Alice?"

"What do we do?" Jack asked, his voice barely audible.

"Alice, my darling, I can smell you!" she giggled gleefully, getting closer as we backed up, "Oh, my baby, I knew mommy would find you again!"

"I thought they only came out at night!" Jack kept on. Kai couldn't get the watch to stop. His eyes blurred with frantic tears and I pushed him behind me, my body shaking like an earthquake.

The woman's scalp was littered with clumps of blonde hair, strewn with bits of forest and flesh. Her hands clawed for us, but she was just far enough away to only grab handfuls of air.

"Fuck it," Kai said aloud, ripping the watch from his wrist and throwing it as far as he could in the opposite direction.

"What now?" I hissed at him. The woman bared her rotting teeth in a smile. She was getting too close.

"Don't you worry, Alice, mommy's here now," she groped out for me and I lurched back.

"The hell d'you think?" Kai snapped at me, "Run!"

The woman lurched for Jack and I managed to stab her in the wrist in one fine swoop. I didn't even realise I'd had the knife in my hand. I wrenched the knife from her skin and grabbed Jack's arm, racing off after Kai and hopefully leaving her behind.

I heard her let out a bloodcurdling scream which was followed far too quickly with her frantic footsteps as she ran after us.

My blood pounded in my ears and I forced my eyes to my feet, watching them thud onto the concrete in a rhythmic panic.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

I couldn't afford to think about anything else. My life depended on me sprinting as fast as I possibly could, and I wasn't going to let myself down.

Just run.

Every man for himself. They'll be fine. They're fast, they'll make it.

Run.

I shot a look over my shoulder, and I cursed myself. Kai and Jack had fallen behind, not by much, but we couldn't afford it.

I cut my speed, dropping back to them and trying to pull them both along with me.

Just keep running. We'd make it through. We had to.

"No, Skye, stop!" Jack shouted as I dragged him by his arm.

"Now's really not the time for a rest!"

He wrestled his arm from my grip and skidded to a dead stop.

"Jack what the fuck!" Kai shouted as we realised what he'd done and came to a stop ourselves, about ten metres ahead of him.

"Go!" he yelled, "I'll catch up!"

"The hell 'you'll catch up', have you been paying attention!"

"Have you?"

The woman got deadly close to him and started clawing at his jacket, her mouth foaming with God knows what. Jack stomached his breakfast and gripped the sides of her head, her skin threatening to peel off beneath his touch. Her clawing became frantic, and she started screaming at him, shouting for Alice to come back to her.

It would've been sad, but then she'd tried to chase us down and kill us. I wasn't exactly sympathetic.

Jack's face contorted in a mix of anger and fear as he lit his hands up, the heat pulsing into the woman's head. As his hands became flaming balls of pure fire, her erratic screams echoed across the motorway and I shrank back into myself, avoiding her eyeless stare.

"Don't look!" he said as he turned his head away. I didn't want to see what would happen, so I threw my arm up and squeezed my eyes shut.

She was already there in the corners of the black.

I heard something hit the floor, and I winced. It certainly wasn't Jack.

"Okay!" Jack's voice materialised next to me. "Okay, it's over,"

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes. His hands were back in immaculate fists, and the woman's body lay even more disfigured in the middle of the road, her skull caved in and dark red blood dripping from the peak of brain matter I could see beneath the blonde clumps.

It took everything in me not to throw up.

"Well," Kai ran a hand through his matted hair, unable to hide his slightly impressed look of horror, "That's one way to handle it,"

"Let's keep going," Jack dragged us both out of our paralysed states. "She was quite loud, and I can still hear your watch,"

"Good call," I clasped him on the shoulder and walked backwards for a few yards, my eyes refusing to leave the woman's corpse. Kai forced me to turn around and we picked up the pace, heading into the treeline for a bit of coverage.

Whether it was a better or worse decision, we'd eventually find out.

Jack didn't seem bothered by what he'd just done, and the way he'd jumped into action made me think that SWORD had trained him to be a weapon, and me to be a coward, to trust in my ability to get away rather than face what was out here, and it sure was hell out here.

Maybe Jack wasn't as bad as he made himself seem, after all he'd just saved our lives. I'd have to repay the favour sooner or later. Maybe then I wouldn't run away from them. It was easy to think about, but really when it came down to it I was hardwired to run, conditioned to be powerless.

I had other ways to be powerful. I didn't need fire.

They'd soon learn that. I'd show them what being a Snuff really meant, and it wasn't just running from my battles.