Amid the Clouds (Brave New World Book 1)

Chapter 5

I was having yet another episode of being frozen on the spot and staring ahead.

Once again, fate was laughing in my face like that bitch who had stolen my second boyfriend two years ago. After everything I had survived today, I was going to miss my only chance of escape right when it was under my very nose.

From here I could even see my bike parked at a safe distance from the side of the building, knocked down by Carson's hasty departure on his own bike. All I had to do was go down twenty floors, get on that bike and ride home for seven or so miles...

I would never make it. I knew it, but still I stood there, silently cursing the fast-approaching mid-sized black ships under the deafening sound of their warning sirens.

First off, I wouldn't reach the ground before the aliens started dropping their bombs over the nearby city. The accompanying tremors would just beg me to tumble down the steep steps or fall off the bike. Secondly, there was no way a cyclist could slip past the ships' sensors so close to town. After all, the whole point of the sirens was to make any humans run for cover, exposing themselves to the invaders from above in the process.

No wonder the bombings were starting earlier than scheduled. They were no longer aimed so much at the monsters infesting the city as at catching unprepared the humans running from the bombings. Clearly, the aliens were starting to get desperate as the competition for human survivors was becoming fiercer.

Sure, the aliens didn't want humans for food like most of the other creatures hunting us these days. However, using men for test subjects and women for breeding was kind of worse, so... Thank God some soldiers had escaped the clutches of the aliens and revealed over the radio that the self-proclaimed saviors of humankind from the two apocalypses were actually an apocalypse by themselves.

Those lucky guys had also provided a detailed description of the aliens - with the exact number of tentacles per E.T. and all.

Maybe if one day push came to shove, I would choose becoming an alien mommy over being eaten alive. But today was not that day.

As the first bombs fell from the oval-shaped ships over the city, I closed the emergency door and went back to the safety of the well-illuminated conference hall. I was going to wait the bombings out.

Although I had never stayed near a city during the raids to know from experience how long these lasted, I was sure it couldn't be hours. With the sun setting in an hour or so, it would be a close call for sure, but I was going to make it out of here.

Just in case, I closed the double door leading to the elevators. I felt safer without seeing those dark shafts constantly, and the click of the lock felt reassuring. With that done, I turned my attention to the room.

For some reason, my gaze shifted to the bat-man right away. The creature was lying perfectly still in the exact same spot and position in which I had left it, so it had to be dead.

Yet, I found myself moving closer for a better look. Sword in hand, I bent over the blue-skinned body, making sure to stay clear of its right arm and leg; its right wing, too.

Yep, the bat-man was permanently dead. There were no traces of the icky bright-green substance on its face that zombies practically vomited in the mouth of some victims to transmit the reanimation virus.

I was about to step away when it hit me: what better chance to study this new type of monster than this? I was stuck in here for a bit anyway, and the more I could learn the better for my community's survival.

Sword still in hand for safety - not dissection, because I wasn't that motivated as a scientist - I stepped a bit to the right for a better view. I was still out of reach of any limb in case the creature came back to life like in some B-grade horror movie. I just had to be careful not to step any further to the right to avoid tripping over the thick cable on the floor there.

Starting from the top: perfectly straight shoulder-length hair tucked behind a pair of pointed ears. Eyebrows as raven-black as the hair. High cheekbones. A well-shaped nose. Thin lips a tone lighter than that of the smooth face and body, the color of which reminded me of the dark-blue sky before sunrise. Tips of fangs visible between the slightly parted lips. Square jaw.

In short, nothing grotesque; peculiar yes, but also kind of... handsome.

The thick neck led into broad, well-defined shoulders that in turn led into a very broad chest as hairless as the rest of this body. Corded muscles were what I saw when my gaze traced the lines of the arms and legs. Black claws over the tips of the fingers and toes finalized the picture.

Nothing extraordinary here either.

Unless the gold-colored knee-length piece of cloth over the groin area was hiding something extraordinary all by itself. But I definitely wasn't going to inspect what lay underneath.

The loincloth, made of what looked like dyed leather, sparkled a bit under the sunlight. The bat-men downstairs hadn't had such a fancy outfit - I was calling it a loincloth, but it didn't look as simplistic as the name suggested.

Just like the wearer wasn't bad on the eyes.

I tried to focus on the wings to remind myself that this wasn't some human hunk painted in blue. The wings were big and, now that I was kneeling to take a better look at their texture, I could tell they were quite similar to a bat's: thicker edges, outlines of veins... What was missing was the bat's extra-long and thin fingers to visually divide the wings into sections. Also, there were sharp white things - bones? - at each wing's upper tip.

Were these wings as soft as a bat's? I touched the inside of the right wing with a fingertip.

Again, the bat-man didn't spring to life like in a clichéd horror movie.

I passed my palm along the wing's length, liking the feel of the soft skin against my calloused palm. Yes, it was as silky to the touch as a bat's wing, just cold postmortem.

Darn, how I missed my Bachelor student years as an applied animal behaviorist! Back then the constant studying and struggle for money over the high tuition fees had made me say more than once that I needed an apocalypse to put me out of my misery.

Oh, how I laughed at my student self now. Not that the lack of need for money wasn't kind of refreshing...

Speaking of refreshing, weren't those wounds close to where my hand was, less fresh than before? As in, no longer so big and nasty-looking against the smooth blue perfection surrounding them?

I jumped to my feet and stepped away immediately, not risking a more thorough look.

Nothing moved in front of me: the dead body was still a dead body.

I did, however, trip on that cable in my haste.

I fell backwards, dropping the sword while waving my arms instinctively. Like that would prevent me from ending on my butt.

I never reached the floor. One second I was falling backwards and the next, something was curling around my ankle and pulling.

Next thing I knew, I was hanging over the ground by my left leg, body upside down. And staring into a pair of muscular blue calves.

Frightened to the point of my heart bursting, I still looked up - or was it down? - to follow the lines of the body standing in front of me.

A pair of black eyes with no pupils met mine.

At my stare, the tail holding me by the ankle - the same one I had foolishly mistaken for a cable - tightened further.

I quickly diverted my gaze, in case my stare got interpreted as a dominance display. I ended up staring at the wound on the creature's thigh instead - or what remained of the wound, anyway. The torn flesh was knitting itself back together, the wound disappearing while I watched. Just like the wounds of vampires healed, though a bit slower.

Maybe the bat-man was a type of vampire, after all, with those fangs of its, just one battling with the vampires I was familiar with. Over food, undoubtedly, given the dwindling supply.

Death by bloodsucking it was for me, then. I just hoped the creature would use its fangs to feed like vampires in movies, and not tear a chunk off my flesh like real vamps did. May my death caused by stupidity - for having saved a monster - at least be a less painful one.

I closed my eyes, not having the courage to stare at my own death.