The Infected Mind

Chapter 15

I awoke hanging upside down from the rafter beams. Seriously, again?

If a Crawler sleeps on something thin like a tree branch or, in this case, a rafter, it is not uncommon for us to latch onto it with our Crawler legs and hang like a bat. This had happened to me before when I slept on a streetlight once, and another time on a tree branch. 

When I was on the light, I woke up to the sound of humans, after looking around while pretending to be asleep, I saw it was three teenagers that had to be at least a couple years older than me who were gawking at seeing a Crawler so close. Even now I remain confused at why they weren't trying to get away from me.

They were looking at me like they had never seen a Crawler sleeping and considering they were still alive, that was true. Most people never see Crawlers sleeping anyway, so I couldn't blame them. It was sunset so I could see fine at the time. They weren't very close so I didn't think much of it, I hadn't thought they could be that stupid.

When two of them dared the third to poke me, I thought they couldn't possibly be that idiotic, so I had ignored it. I soon felt a sharp point hit the center of my back. I chuckled now remembering what my first instinct was when that happened.

I had spun around and grabbed his wrist, which caused him to drop the arrow he poked me with, then growled while staring directly into his eyes. His friends had ran while yelling for the rest of their group and he screamed while struggling to free himself from my grasp. 

When the adults got there some started laughing at how I hooked the back of his shirt to a street sign and just left to watch from one of the rooftops. They got him down after some struggling and joked about how even Crawlers have senses of humor. I had noticed their weapons in hand though, and made myself scarce.

I grinned to myself at the memory, I was pretty sure that guy didn't sleep for a while afterwards. Looking up at my Crawler legs revealed that the three legs had fully regenerated during the night, and a thought occurred to me; I slept through the night. That never happened to me before, ever since I turned, I hadn't been able to sleep while the moon was out. Crawlers were nocturnal, after all. Being shot must've caused me to be extremely tired, more so than I realized. I was amazed my Crawler legs had fully regenerated.

This was the first time I had ever lost a limb, so I had no basis to go off of, but still. Less than twenty four hours seemed...not right.

I climbed down silently as to not wake everyone else up, it was still early, and everyone was still asleep. To be safe, I was going to go hunt again, although I doubted I would find anything. The storm last night was brutal.

Walking through the living room, I saw Raven was still asleep on the couch, and Jasmine had her hoodie on backwards with the hood over her face. If I hadn't known Jasmine for years, I might have thought it was strange. I opened the front door and was met with almost a foot of snow across the ground. I looked around at the massive blanket of white that coated the forest. As pretty as it was, I did not want to walk in the ankle deep snow, at least for my Crawler legs.

I climbed up to the chimney and tried to smell for anything in the area, and growled at the smells that came back. I knew that fire would attract someone, but not this. I jumped off the roof and my Crawler legs sank into the snow, with a few uncomfortable steps, I jumped to the top of the trees and followed the scent, shivering slightly at the cold while I was only wearing a T-shirt.

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I found a few Crawlers in a small clearing of the forest, there was a cave there which was obviously where they were sleeping, from the footprints around in the snow, and the scent escaping the cave. From here I could smell a couple of them, it seemed they hadn't hunted for a while, or they were good at keeping blood off their clothes. I slowly stalked out of the trees and gave out a quiet growl, but not in a threatening sense.

Crawlers are more like animals than the standard human would think. To them, we are all mindless monsters, who only want to feed on humans. But if that were truly the case, why would we set up nests, hideouts, territory? We are like an intelligent species of wolf in some ways. The growl I used was more a way of communication, and I had asked something long the lines of 'who's there?'.

There were different kinds of growls that a human wouldn't tell the difference between. Same with snarls, and even small screeches. The two small Crawler legs that hung at my hips were used for communication, with clicks and scrapes. For some reason, male Crawlers had them at their shoulders, while female Crawlers had it at their hips.

There was a faint stirring in the cave, but before long I heard someone answer back; it sounded feminine, "what are you doing here?"

I answered calmly, but to humans, we were just snarling and growling at eachother, "I could ask you the same question. Why are you in the middle of this forest?"

"What are you doing out in the middle of the day? Are you blind?"

"No. But that is unimportant. What are you doing out here in my territory?"

"It is too bright to see who I am speaking with. Come in here so we can speak."

I walked through the snow hesitantly. Anywhere I stepped could be a patch of ice or something could be hidden beneath, so I tried to keep to stepping into the tracks made by these Crawlers. I felt eyes on me, obviously one of them were wondering what was taking so long.

I eventually managed to get into the cave, and saw that there were indeed two Crawlers inside: a man, and a woman. He had a fair amount of muscle, as was typical for Crawlers, and short black hair. She was fairly tall and had blonde hair that went to the center of her back, and she stared at me with narrowed eyes.

The man was watching me with suspicious eyes. To my surprise neither of them had any blood on their clothes, so I could only imagine what I looked like to them, having bloodstains on my back.

I made sure my body language showed I meant no harm, considering her body language showed the same thing. He was a different story. I shortened my Crawler legs so I was kneeling on the ground, as a way of putting myself beneath them. It was still a Crawler-like thing to do, and quite common at that.

"So, why did you come here to our den?" The man snapped at me.

I again, replied calmly, "There is a building nearby that had a fireplace going, I was making sure no one came too close."

"Too close?!" He snarled, "So you are trying to keep all the food to yourself?"

I backed up, "No. I wanted to make sure no one came too close, so they wouldn't get killed."

This riled him up, "There are humans there, we came to hunt them when the sun rose. What are you trying to do?"

I knew I could escape if he got violent, as he had no way of moving in the sunlight, so I continued as I was, "I had intended to go there and hunt, but when I did, they were far stronger than I had thought. They shot me here," I tilted my head so they could see the wound, their eyes widened.

"Obviously I was knocked unconscious from this, when I woke up, three of my legs had been cut off and there was a knife in my back. I was also tied up. I barely escaped there with my life." They looked between eachother and me a few times, unsure of what to make of it.

"And before you say anything, I regenerated my legs overnight." Now they both were believing me, a swearing each question they had, thankfully. I may have neglected to mention that if they attacked the others, I would kill them without hesitation.

"All I wanted to say was I would recommend you get away from here before they find you. They have pretty bright flashlights at their disposal as well." I didn't wait for them to respond. I launched out the mouth of the cave and into the trees.

Any idiot would get the memo and leave, my appearance helped my case too. It would likely make them trust me, being a child who went out of their way to protect strangers.