Lucas Ryan Versus - Madison Daniel Page 0,52

Morgan followed, nervously. The Homecoming Queen covered her mouth in vain to quell her screams but it was no use. What she saw in front of her was too terrifying.

Attached to the back of the King’s neck was a slithering black and purple snake. Its mouth was locked onto the meat just below his hairline and its body jerked back and forth. With a snap it perched upward, unhitching its teeth from the boys neck. The snake wasn’t a snake at all. It shot upward in the air at the closest person with its mouth pulling apart and four clawed appendages jutting outward, grabbing at the air as it lunged forward. The crowd of onlookers flailed backwards with their dangling fake wings slapping into each other.

“That’s not a snake!” Morgan yelled out. From the stage the Homecoming Queen stopped screaming and took two staggered steps backwards. Her hands reached up to the back of her head as she spun around in place and tumbled to the floor like a sack of rocks. Wired to the back of her head and neck were at least ten serpents of all different sizes and lengths. They twisted together like a braid before falling to the floor and zipping away in all directions.

“Soph! Run! Head for the emergency exits!” I demanded, with a shove. “Now!”

She ran off in a blink of an eye, leaping over a few snakes like an action hero. I turned to Morgan who had already started chopping at the monsters with her angel wings in her fists like two swords.

“We have to get these people out of here!” she hollered. Another handful of students fell to the floor, succumbing to the bites of the spider-snakes. Bodies with fluffy white wings attached to their backs began to pile up. I reached out and snagged my microphone stand into my hands and wielded it like a staff. More snakes slithered from the edge of the stage in waves of fangs and spit. There were so many of them, too many of them.

“Where are they all coming from?” I called out to Morgan. From the ceiling even more monsters rained down. Some as long as the school ropes that sometimes hung from the rafters to the floor in gym class. Every crack or hole in the building’s frame seemed to be leaking the serpents.

“Everywhere,” Morgan declared. I swung my makeshift weapon as hard as I could with Morgan at my back doing the same, and all I could think about was that this must be what happened to Lucas and the others.

I ordered, “Keep fighting! Don’t stop!”

“Let’s get to the emergency exit at the back of the room,” Morgan pleaded, but I had already started fighting that way. I had sent Sophia that way and I needed to make sure she had been able to escape. As the lights along the ceiling began to flash on and off, I quickened my pace.

“Hurry!” I demanded. Most of the students had succumbed to the wave of snakes, leaving only a dozen or so still on their feet. They were screaming at the top of their lungs and running for any exit in sight. The problem was each and every exit seemed to be heavily swarmed with the larger serpents. They coiled themselves like horrific totem poles that watched over the smaller attackers as they swept through the buffet of students. I was praying that they hadn’t found the emergency exit behind the stage that only a handful of school faculty used. It was hidden in a bend around the corner of a large hallway closet that resembled a dead end. This useless nook was usually used for storing boxes or folded tables. All of which hid the door at the back. It didn’t even have an exit sign above it. I pushed our retreat to this hidden escape with all my strength. Sadly, Morgan and I had to use the fallen bodies of our classmates as stepping stones to avoid the slithering floor.

“Are we almost there?” Morgan asked, winded. I nodded yes and jumped over a knot of snakes that were preoccupied with feeding on some of the football team and their dates. On a closer inspection, they weren’t eating them but cocooning the bodies in a glistening green slime that streamed from their mouths. I had to turn my head from the sight.

“The door’s right up ahead,” I called out over my shoulder. “We’re going to make it!” I smashed a heal into a