WOW rank 1 in Paranormal! I seriously thought I'd never accomplish this feat, thank you SO much for the support everyone! Here is the next chapter, enjoy! Hope you keep voting!
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It didn’t take long for a call to come in for a mission. Two days actually—she only had two days of rest before she was sent out again. Lilly jumped to the capital and within four hours was already on a private jet going right for the Iran/Iraq border. According to the mission statement she was going to intercept and kill a small caravan. A well-known terrorist from the climax of the Third World War was attempting to cross the border from Iran to Iraq, several large decoy squads have been sent out and the military will deal with them.
But, Intel managed to pinpoint a small two vehicle caravan with no more than six people heading for the Iraq border. That, according to all records, was the real convey. Previously there would have been no way with America’s recourses to stop the vehicles before they crossed and vanished. But with Lilly, they had some sort of an advantage, like an instant and silent parachute one-man army.
Her job was to intercept and kill all men in the caravan then ID the target for bounty rewards. And yes—America has changed over the years. It’s turned from the technological economic giant of the start of the 21st century to a struggling country dependent on others as well as underground profits such as smuggling and bounties. Sure the people maintained their style of living, but at a cost most were completely unaware of.
As for Lilly’s condition her chest no longer hurt and she could use her leg just fine with the exception of not being able to but her full force on it yet. The scars and burns on her arm were gone and it felt great. But her other arm still shot occasional waves of pain through her body—the kind of pain one would feel if someone scraped sharp nail across their arm. She could feel the marked arm again with the exception of her hand and had regained most control all the way up to the fingers.
The melted scar up her entire arm looked like it had no intention of healing and her hand was still the same grey damp limb all the ghouls had. She could move her fingers and hand—but it felt as if it wasn’t her own anymore. The moist skin felt like it was going to fall off when she tested it with her other fingers, that couldn’t be a good sign. With the appearance that her hand will never get better she managed to get a thicker black glove for that hand—it wasn’t flexible but it hid the damaged skin well. Now her gloves were two different shades, but that appeared unavoidable.
The mission was simple this time. The plane she was in was going to fly thirty thousand feet in the air and when the order was given she was going to jump directly down to the surface. The location she lands at should be within a mile of a road that the two vehicles will be traveling on. She looked around the airplane; she was much more satisfied with this trip than her first adventure, a nice quite private jet instead of the filthy and loud helicopter and cargo plane trip last time.
She was on an eight passenger private jet, it was only her, the pilots and a single other man, the spotter. He noted himself as Salhem, they picked him up at the airport in Iraq before they went airborne. He had short flattened hair that brushed down his face just short of his eyebrows and darkened skin proving he spent most his life in the sun. A short sleeve white dress shirt was on him and short black slacks that went down just past his knees. The spotter appeared quite shy—he spent most of his time on a laptop feverishly typing away and flipping through screens trying to keep track of the target or something.
The airplane itself had four leather recliner chairs in the front, each of them facing an empty circle in the center. The circle was designed for a small table to be put in the center, but the table wasn’t there. After those were two rows of large cloth chairs, the rows had a small isle in the center and one chair on each side. All chairs had a considerable amount of space in front of them. Past the four chairs in the back was a bathroom and in the front was a small compartment for attendants then the cockpit. In this case there were no attendants on the airplane.
Salhem was seated in one of the leather chairs and had a decent sized suitcase with wires coming out in all directions in the center were the table used to be. It was a generator and his connection to a satellite to maintain tracking—that’s at least what his few words told Lilly. Trying to avoid the fire hazard and trip wires sprawled along the floor, Lilly chose one of the cloth chairs in the tail end of the aircraft next to the bathrooms. She kept herself content by humming quietly as well as examining and picking at her permanently damaged hand.
Upon her picking Lilly spotted an odd flap of skin just past the knuckle of her pointer finger. She admired the flap and noticed a thin crack that encompassed the finger. She tugged at the flap and it felt like someone pulling at a shirt—she felt the pressure and force in her hand but no pain from the hand itself. She tried to pull the dried out skin off maybe like the scar in the hospital it was fresh and new under the skin. A slimy gurgle slobbered off her finger. She un-intently let out a scream. Salhem looked from his screen. “What?” he had an odd accent she couldn’t quite figure out. Lilly’s eyes were on the verge of tears. Crept out she held up her hand to examine it closer. Her finger, the entire chunk with an exception of the bone below had moved up. It had slid almost an inch up. The skin and dead muscle slid off like a glove.
With her face twitching slightly she pulled the skin glove off her finger, all that was left was the bone and tenants. She was breathing heavily. Her hand was falling apart. Between her quickened breaths she tried to move the finger. Slowly she bent it down and then back up. “Holy crap… Holy CRAP!” She kept chanting to herself quicker and quicker in her head. Panicked she fumbled around her lap until she found the thick glove and forced it over her grey hand with more force than was necessary. She rubbed the bone through the glove with her other hand—even though the glove it had an odd feel to it. That just happened.
“What?” the odd accent shot across the plane once more. Lilly looked up, realizing that Salhem was trying to get her attention. She did suddenly scream. He was getting ready to get up and go to see what was wrong.
“It’s okay.” Lilly reassured him, “Just woke myself up from an odd dream. I was falling, and couldn’t jump away—I hit the ground.” She brushed her good hand through her hair slightly embarrassed she made him notice her for the first time in the four hours of flying. She didn’t think of controlling him—she didn’t see the need, it would probably just distract him and she’d miss the opportunity below. She decided to only reserve that power for when she needed something or was in battle.
Lilly controlled her breathing into slowing down; trying her best to pretend she didn’t just take all the flesh off one of her fingers. The skin glove was still in her lap, she decided to shove it in a pocket and ditch it when she got on the ground, and it was disgusting. She calmed herself down and tried to pretend that she didn’t just rip all the skin off her finger.
“Well, drop in one minute twelve seconds.” Salhem announced. It looked like they were right above the caravan. Her job was about to start. She got up from her comfy chair and slowly strolled into the isle and up towards Salhem. She ignored the odd sensation now burning up her marked hand, the sensation of bone scratching against leather.
“Now!” she heard, but didn’t react. “NOW!” the voice came again—she understood it this time. It was time to go. Her mind had wondered in that moment before the action—what was she becoming? She shrugged off the bone on leather feel and jumped straight down. She landed evenly on packed dirt. A road was just over a slight hill. She had no cape this time—it would have weighted her down. This was going to be an undercover attack, she wore a light jacket and tight black slacks for this attack. She wanted to be dark—to blend into the shadows.
She shifted back a bit and waited for the small caravan to approach the road just in front of her. It was pretty easy to duck behind the small hill and become almost unnoticeable. Lilly tried her best to keep the pressure off of her damaged leg, it had healed considerably, but she’d rather not take chances. She didn’t want to push down on it too hard. Her chest on the other hand was almost completely repaired. Unless she got hit hard in the stomach or on the back she should be fine.
She lowered to her stomach as the sound of two SUV’s approached her location. The moment the pair of SUV’s came into eyeshot she jumped. Lilly appeared on the ground in between two pairs of feet. She was sprawled out on the fairly large foot space of the back seat of the lead SUV. Her aura exploded into the vehicle and drilled into the owners of the two pairs of feet she was crunched in between of. She pulled a light black sheet out from under her jacket and reached her mouth for one of the legs in front of her. She should have been paying more attention and wrapped the sheet around her head the second she hit the ground. She could already feel pain from her ears and some of her face due to being out in the sun for a few minutes.
She bit down on the bare leg in front of her. No sound or reaction came from the owner. She was too busy controlling him to do one thing instead—ignore the pain. After her natural process took over and she fed him a little of the delicious liquid she fumbled around for a bit until she managed to rotate her body in position to clamp down on the second pair of legs. This time she let the rest of the liquid from her first bite run into his body before her natural process even started. Lilly huddled up between to two men and tried her best to avoid the pooling blood on either side of her. She didn’t want to get any more of it on her clothes than needed—it looked sloppy.
A few minutes passed. She felt both the men lose consciousness around the same time. Then she felt them wake up again—as new monsters. The driver and passenger in front never even noticed. She let her control on the ghouls go and jumped into the small trunk space behind the back seats. Instantly the two new born ghouls snapped at the chairs in front of them, one of them grabbed the drivers face with its rotten hands. It fumbled its fingers around his face until one found an eye. He screamed at the sudden aggression of his once friend behind him and the car swerved. The other ghoul already had its face between the seats and its sharp jagged teeth snapping at the shoulder and neck of the passenger ripping both parts to shreds.
Lilly felt the car losing its traction on the weave and start up a barrel roll at eighty miles per hour. Deciding she didn’t want to deal with being spun around in a metal death trap, Lilly jumped out of the car to one side of the desolate road. She watched from the side as the SUV in front took several brutal rolls, one even managing to launch the vehicle almost four feet into the air. The black SUV following it slammed its breaks and weaved slightly to avoid the flying debris of the first car.
It was over in fifteen seconds. The SUV smashed and broken came to a halt on its side—the top facing the second car and horizontal on the road. Smoke bellowed out of the front end and blood was bluntly obvious smothered over all the broken windows, most from the convenient pools she left behind in the back. More blood that was flung out of cracks and destroyed windows lay in scattered lines along the road along with thrown chunks of the car.
Lilly had the black sheet wrapped over her shoulders—she still managed to forget to cover her face for protection, the slight burns on her ears and face grew in the small gap she was exposed to sunlight for. Two men got out of the car frozen in the back; it was both the men seated in the back seat of the SUV. She drew the six inch army knife she acquired at her last attack out of her pocket and jumped for the man on the driver side. She came out and stabbed him through the back. Before he could even let out a grudge she jumped for the second man and stabbed through his chest as well. She then jumped behind the man in front of her and flung the knife into the back tire. Air blew out of the tire in seconds and the entire SUV shifted to one side.
She then jumped to the other side SUV again, back on the driver’s side, and hit the unlock bottom on the open back door. With her speed she opened the driver door and grabbed at the driver. It was a woman. Lilly squeezed her hands on the woman’s shirt and pulled her out of the driver seat. With her speed and strength Lilly spun a full circle and crushed the woman’s face into the window of the back door. Blood shot out into the air and her skull crippled in on itself while the window refused to break. Oh, the downsides of bulletproof glass.
Lilly dropped the mutilated body and popped her head back into the driver’s door. Ten seconds had passed since her first jump for the vehicle, “Hello.” she grinned at the stunned passenger and last remaining survivor of the caravan. “You’re my hunt.” She noted he didn’t have a gun on him like all the others did. “Now, get out of the car for me and smile so I can take a picture. They need a shot of you alive first to verify you’re the right guy.”
The man opened his door and rolled out of the car. He stumbled on the ground a bit before getting to his feet and starting a sprint out into the desert. Lilly jumped after him and came out just behind him with her arm forcefully flying down. She nailed him in the back so hard he flung forward and his face collided with the dirt. As he scrambled on the ground to get up she taunted some more, “Now now—I need to get the picture before you’re too torn up.” He turned around his eyes looked up into her black orbs. Lilly pulled the black sheet off her neck and wrapped it around her face. She finally decided she couldn’t take any more of the sunlight. Looking through the cloth was a bit harder but still plenty enough for her with her increased vision. She had no trouble seeing what she was doing.
He put his fists up ready to fight back. He charged up at her and tried to land a punch. Lilly moved out of the way and dropped a rough slap across his face. He was thrown once again to the ground. She didn’t realize how much her strength had gone up. A tingling sensation ran through the arm she whacked him with. She moved her fingers around in the glove a bit and concluded that she cracked more of the skin on her hand.
When he got up from the whack she noticed not only the blood on his face and nose from hitting the ground too hard but also a finger sized mark with several punctures on his cheek where she hit him. She glanced down at the glove and noticed several holes in the pointer finger part—the bone broke through the glove and bruised him. Brutal.
He hobbled a bit—she noted he still hadn’t recovered from the blow. She took a few steps forward and drilled a solid punch into his chest and felt several bones snapping under the force. The man doubled over after she obviously broke several of his ribs. Her hand went out for one of the arms of the face down man and rolled him over. She stood above him and looked down at his face with one of her feet on top of his arm. His face was beaten to a pulp already. She smiled and said down to him, “Say cheese!” A camera she pulled out flashed in his face.
She pulled his body up more and dropped down on top of him. She sat down on his broken ribs and watched in joy as he cringed in pain. A sudden urge overcame her. Her fingers frantically pulled the leather glove off her dead hand and admired the boney finger along with the cracked and flapping skin over the rest of her hand. All the skin was going to fall off, that much she was now sure. Locking the pointer finger straight she forced it down into a stab. The bone finger easily penetrated his cheek and grinded into his mouth. She bent the knuckles and pulled his face up closer to hers using the puncture wound she created in his cheek.
With her other hand she pulled open a gap in the sheet just large enough for her mouth and dropped in on his neck. She held his head still with her bone finger and pushed down harder on his ribs to prevent his feet from thrashing. Her cycle started. She let him suck in all the wonderful liquid then began in return sucking out all his liquid—all his blood. His hands thrashed slightly at her but quickly stilled as blood loss overcame his body like a thunderstorm. He was dead in another thirty seconds then drained even more for several more minutes. Once she was no longer able to draw anything else from his neck she withdrew. Her finger tore open the hole in his cheek like tearing away at paper. The body looked like a mummified corpse. She stood up and snapped another picture of it. She glanced around at the two vehicles and the bodies. Just like the last attack she did—the cleanup wasn’t her job.
She began the long series of jumps to get back to the base in Washington. Her job was done—kill the bounty, and since she knew where Washington was there was absolutely no need to take the long airplane flight black.