Sinth Salvation - Pearl Tate Page 0,47
quiet considering her husband is being loaded into a body bag right now. At least, what’s left of him.
Spinning, Ólafur takes off without another word. I immediately fall into step behind him. I don’t care if I’m covered in Taxin remains, and they all hate me because I’m a woman—and an Earth Human to boot. Holding this situation against the woman who was abducted is just ludicrous!
I hear the feral groans before I see the elderly woman thrashing against the back window, trying aggressively to get out through the glass. “Sir, this human has transitioned.”
The Taxin standing there states the obvious, pointing at the window. She immediately springs for his finger, cracking her face against the glass and ricocheting back from the force. What happened to her that she transitioned so quickly?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
- Nikon
Staring in horror at the elderly woman, I swallow hard, nodding my agreement to Lilibeth’s statement. This is the exact woman, but she looks nothing like she did earlier.
Instead of tears streaming down her face, there’s slobber dripping off her chin. Blank, white eyes stare at us in hunger as she throws herself over and over at the window, causing her forehead to split and bleed. The blood collects on the window, smearing as she stops to growl and presses her face against the glass, looking for a way to breach her confinement.
“This is …” My voice trails off as I try to articulate what I’m thinking. How long has it been? It feels like it’s been only moments since I was protecting her when she was stupid enough to get out of her car.
“Was this the woman who called in what was going on?” Ólafur prompts me while I consider the ramifications of what happened here. The shortening transitions after exposure … I’ll need to report it immediately.
“… unbelievable. I … assume so?” Putting my arm around Lilibeth, I draw her back, not willing to test the effectiveness of the glass on these vehicles. “Is that what happened? She called it in?”
Nodding, Ólafur looks at one of the other military representatives who was circling the car before coming up next to him. He’s Taxin, but from the lighter coloring in his scales, he’s younger. “What do you have for information, Ja’kel?”
The other Taxin steps forward, causing Lilibeth to shrink back, clearly not comfortable with their physical appearance. “This does appear to be Helga and her husband, Bjarni.” He’s pulled out his phone and flips through it, rambling off details. “She called in approximately twenty-eight minutes ago, saying her husband and she just finished a round of golf at the Mosfellsbær Golf Club. They noticed all these amphibians—she called them large amphibians—blocking the road, and when they started attacking someone who stepped outside the bus … we aren’t sure exactly who their initial target was, Bjarni exited his vehicle to help. However, by the time he’d gotten out and retrieved his golf club from the trunk, Helga said that ‘the creatures’ were crawling all over the man from the bus and were starting to overcome her husband.”
“Fuck! What time was that again? Half an hour ago?” Ólafur looks at me, clearly just as concerned as I am.
Personally, I’ve never heard of anyone transitioning from the Wen virus that quickly. Could there be something new that caused this accelerated change?
“It was almost instantaneous with the man on the bus too,” Lilibeth adds. “I was fighting them off, hoping he would be able to get unstuck. Unfortunately, to get the whole story, you’d have to talk to Jón.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen for some time. Or ever. That poor kid will need counseling to deal with all this as it is.” For a Taxin, Ólafur seems very remorseful, and I’m reminded that, despite his species, he’s still emphatic to the Humans’ plight.
No one says anything for a moment until Lilibeth steps forward. “What’re you going to do? I mean—”
“We have groups in boats setting up to investigate this area now.” Waving out at the water, he motions us away from the car where other Taxin are still a discussing how to get the raving woman out and restrained without hurting her. I don’t bother to point out that Wen-transitioned don’t appear to register pain the way everyone’s thinking.
Following Ólafur over and away from the groups of men and Taxin milling around, I notice news crews have been set up farther down the road and that there are no longer helicopters flying overhead. “This is one of the only