A Ghost of a Chance 2

Chapter II:  Every Undead for Herself

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!  My alarm clock sounded just as my dream was starting to get interesting.  It was about a mass grouping of dead beings in an old building watching a deranged tap-dancer balance a piranha on his nose and juggle sharks.

I shook the weird dream out of my head, climbed down from my bunk bed, and smacked the alarm clock on my dresser silent.  Its time read 7:03.  Another school day, I guessed.  I yawned a long, sleepy yawn and took a long-sleeved shirt out of my closet with a pair of jeans, putting them on while sitting on my brother’s bed.  I threw my backpack over my arm and headed out in search of my shoes and socks.

…

A figure waited in the shadows of my closet, looking around sleepily.  She carefully stepped out, sidestepping the toys scattered throughout the floor.  She crept to the door and peeked around the corner, her eye tracing the movements of someone who was walking down the stairs.  She smiled to herself and murmured, “There he is, safe and sound.”

She stole back into the room, closed the door, opened a window, and sat on the bed.  A light hid her from view.  A light-blue butterfly flew out of this light and flew out of the window into the crisp morning breeze.  Another butterfly in the same color soon followed, and another, and another.  A sea of butterflies flew out the window, collecting into a cloud formation.

This cloud of butterflies flew around the house to the front lawn.  Most of them collected in the large crabapple tree planted by the center of the house, but one fluttered down and landed on a red car, a Subaru to be precise.

A door slammed, and several people came running towards the car.  Three of these people were teenage girls, one was a woman in her late thirties, and the final one was the person she was watching:  a boy about thirteen with brown, unruly curly hair and a backpack slung across his back.  They all piled into the car, and it revved to life, almost shaking the lone butterfly off.  The car backed up out of the driveway, turned down the winding stretch of road, and sped down the following road.  A small batch of the butterfly cloud, about ten at least, followed after the car, making sure to stick close to the bushes.

…

The car arrived at the front of a large brick structure, not even a mile from where the journey stated.  This structure extended down quite a ways and was irregularly shaped.  The four younger passengers of the car exited it and ran towards a set of glass doors leading into this arcane building.  The butterfly followed them in as the door leading outside closed.  The others in its swarm looked onward from the two trees on the other side of the car.

The butterfly looked around within the vast hallways of the school, but it didn’t see anyone.  The hallway was so empty that a salvo of guns could have been fired from one end of the hall to the other without striking anything.  The best thing this butterfly thought to do was to search the building at one end, the end closer to it.  It soared to the left, its antennae always awaiting the familiar sensation of its secret lover.

…

I walked down the hallway of the school, passing a group of students going to the high school.  They were chatting about something; I didn’t care what.  All I cared about was getting to my classroom on time.  The teacher had promised us something special for today, and I intended to find out what he was talking about.

I turned around an obtuse corner and passed the art room, the auditorium, the middle school entrance, the gymnasium, and the office all in the same hallway.  Students were milling about in each area, getting ready to start the day.  I chuckled to myself as I turned down another hallway.  This one was also a bustle of energy, my fellow classmates running to and from the different classrooms, the sound of the chaotic babbling carrying on throughout the hallway.  I expertly weaved through the action to the room at the far end of the hall right by the emergency escape door leading outside.  I opened the door and entered.

Inside this room, six huge desks that could seat four people apiece (or up to six if necessary) dotted the floor.  The teacher’s desk was at the head of this series, almost taking up as much space as two of the regular desks.  A lab table was on the same wall as the door was, taking up what was left of it.

I walked by this table, past all the assorted beakers, bottles, and other scientific equipment to the lockers taking up the back wall.  Mine was the fourth from the left.  I entered my combination, opened my locker, and took my books.  I carried them to my seat, sighed, and returned to my locker.  Another school day, alright.

When I got to my locker, it was already closed.  In the vent near the top of the door, a rose was planted.  Nothing was attached, not even a secret admirer note.  Strange.  I picked the flower and returned to my seat, keeping it hidden.

Someone else was in my seat when I got there.  He had red hair with a slight tinge of pink in it, the bangs drooping down to the shoulders of his pink jumpsuit’s jacket.  His gentle green eyes were scanning a book, a comic book.  He noticed me hovering over him, so he put his book down and turned to me.  “May I be of service?” he said.  His voice was as soft as his eyes.

“Yes, actually, there is,” I replied.  “I’ve never seen you in our class before.  Are you new?”

“You could say that.  I’m an exchange student from Japan.  My name is Shuichi, but my friends call me Kurama.”

“They call me Heilmann, Michael Heilmann.”  I extended a hand to him, and he gave it a firm shake.

“You speak a very fluent English, Kurama.  How long have you been here?”

“Only two days, but I was always an excellent student.  I learned your language fairly easily, although I have yet to learn the customs of this school; very much unlike my own.”

“Yeah, it took me a little while to adjust, also.”

I fingered the rose, pricking a finger on a thorn.  “Speaking of things that aren’t ours, does this belong to you?”  I held up the rose for him to see.

He nodded as he took the rose and placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket.  “I’ve always been fond of flowers,” he explained with a grimace.

I looked up at the clock hanging right above the doorway.  The time was 7:55, almost time for class.  I took my seat next to Kurama and took out my science book.

…

Suzaku looked out the window of the theatre and into the still morning sun.  He grinned to himself, his flute tucked in his hand.  “Mine…” he murmured.  “All mine.  A place where we and the others can live in peace undetected.  Plenty of food flow, plenty of water, even plenty of space to move around shall soon be mine.  All that’s needed is time.”

A green bird with a violet-blue tuft of hair on her head flew through the door behind him carrying several green medallions in her talons.  “Murugu reporting, Suzaku,” the bird chirped as she alighted on a table.

Suzaku turned around, his mouth still a grin but his eyes focused and serious.  He folded his hands behind his back and asked, “How many pawns do we have in our game?”

“At least one hundred spirits and ghosts, but I didn’t count the zombies.”

“Would you say above or below one thousand?”

“Oh, definitely above.”

Suzaku turned around again and continued to stare out the window.  His eyes traveled down the complex streets of the city, wandering amongst the alleyways and winding highways.  Without turning away, he muttered, “We’re going to need a lot more.”

…

I looked up at the clock again.  The time was 8:55.  I was sitting in the math classroom, the only other classroom on this side of the hall.  Science had only ended five minutes ago, but it was only a movie about cells.  His “surprise” had turned out to be the person who had been sitting next to me in that science class.  I had been expecting sweets, but such was life.

Strangely, that same “surprise” had ended up in my math class, also.

Today was another review day in this class; not really all that difficult, especially to a math whiz such as myself and the fact that I had learned all this crap the previous year in 6th grade!  Ah well, I didn’t hold that against the teacher.  He had enough crap to deal with, especially all of the major league jackasses sitting around me like sharks around a killer whale.

As I listened to his lecture on the formulas of different polygon angles and what not, a note was dropped onto my desk.  This note was made on the customary white-lined paper, but it had a very unorthodox marking sealing it shut.  It was a Japanese symbol, or it could have been Chinese.  Either way I knew who sent it.  I opened it up discretely and read the message:  “Has anything strange happened to you recently?”

I frowned at this statement.  What would he want to know about that for?  Sure, I had two weird incidences occur around me, but they were none of his business.  I took out a pencil and replied, “Who wants to know?”  I hastily folded up the note and returned it from the same direction.  I returned to my notes on the subject at hand.

The note from Kurama landed back on my desk within the minute.  How it made it through the ring of ignoramuses (let alone out of the eyes of the teacher) was beyond me, but it wasn’t my place to complain.  I reopened the note.  Both of the prior messages had been erased, but a new one had replaced them.  “The Police of My World.  They know all about your excursions last year, and they want to know more.”

My eyes widened at this new discovery.  He definitely wasn’t bluffing.  For all I knew about this strange, new predicament, Kurama was a spy sent here to capture me!  I didn’t know I had even done anything wrong!  My brain raked itself in order to turn up a liable excuse to pull my butt out of the fryer.  Suddenly, one turned up.  “It wasn’t my fault; I was led down into that realm by Mario, Ash, and Anakin.  I even helped all of them out with their problems.  What’s so suspicious about that?”

The note again went undetected through the gauntlet.  It was as if the teacher was ignoring our note on purpose!  Curious.

This time when it returned, it read, “You were behind that intrusion?  I thought that you were behind a different one; sorry about that.”

My brow furrowed with this remark.  Why that smug little bastard! He was probably laughing his head off over there while I was reading this latest note.  I had been worried about going off to some jail in who-knows-where, and he expects it to be okay?  I furiously wrote a message back to him:  “What crime or intrusion could have been so bad that you had to interrogate me in the middle of math class?  Whatever it was, I’m not that evil of a person to commit that.  Your ‘superiors’ should have enough of that data to figure that out if they know who I am and where to find me.”

The message came back to me unscathed and unspotted just like the last several.  The reply that came this time froze me to the core, even more so than the accusing message had, even causing me to drop my pencil to the desk:  “The End of the World has escaped into this very city, and you were thought to have released him.”

…

Murugu flew over the bustling city, twittering a soft melody.  To ordinary passersby, it was an ordinary tune known to most birds as far as they knew.

But, to the supernatural dead found hiding all around the city, the tune was a prearranged signal:  time for the haunting to begin.

Ghosts flew in all directions, their eyes peeled for any potential targets and their green medallions held tight in their grasps.  Zombies and demons ran through the streets, their weapons searing through victim after victim.  They tore through whole crowds and harvested their blood into special containers.

They worked so fast that in one minute they leveled a crowded street literally flooded with people.  Cries and moaning were the only warnings that the still unsuspecting city had of this onslaught of bloody horror.  Even so, they were soon preyed upon and left for dead.  Bloody carnage was all that was left behind.

Suzaku watched this insane, festering madness with a wicked laugh filling in the recently emptied stillness, his pet bird perched on his shoulder appreciating this soothing music.

…

Almost three classes later, Kurama and I hooked up again in the gymnasium.  Kurama had changed out of his pink suit and was now wearing a white tee shirt with maroon gym shorts complete with black sneakers.  I was dressed similarly, except that my shirt was a solid blue.  We were both in a long line stretching from one side of the room to the other with some of my other classmates.  A red, rubbery ball was lodged in my hands, as were some of the others in our formation.  We all faced another group of students across the room from us, equally armed but twice as muscular.  The gym teacher was in the higher bleachers, looking down at what was going to be a fiercely heated battle.  He blew his whistle, and all hell broke loose.

The balls were launched at breakneck speeds across the room.  Several people fell on either side, mostly ours, having either been struck in the head or in a solid shot to the crotch.  Still others were carting these poor victims up the stairs to join the safety of the teacher.

I loved dodge ball.    >

I used my ball to block the onslaught of rubbery death that threatened to take me out of the picture; Kurama was playing the offensive angle right behind me, throwing with pinpoint accuracy and hitting victim after victim.  His viciousness was the name of the game that I liked best, despite my lack of a decent throw.  We made a good team. 

A ball came whizzing right towards me.  I angled the ball in my hand and sent the enemy projectile bouncing harmlessly to one of the people next to me.  When he bent down to pick up my ball, though, he got plowed in the crown with another one.  “Man down, man down,” I bellowed.  Kurama quickly evened the score as he caught the ball that had taken out our ally.  Two “rescue workers” ran onto the scene to take him away.

One of the guys in their line, a burly guy who looked more like a senior than a seventh grader, stepped to the front of their ranks.  This guy was the bully of the middle school, a complete punk-ass jerk with more meat in his foot than in his head.  A pair of dodge balls was in each of his huge hands, and he was staring straight at me.  I returned the stare with a pair of nervous Jolly Rogers in my eyes.

I looked to either side.  All of our other men had been taken out, and the other team had hoarded all of the other dodge balls, except for the one I held in my hand.  Kurama was completely empty, and I was a sitting duck.  He was a better player than me by far:  time for a sacrifice.

The big guy wound up his arm to pitch the ball.  If it collided with me, I doubt that even the dodge ball in my hand could have saved me.  I quickly turned around and handed Kurama the ball.  I swept my eyes to the side, a covert command:  get out of the way.  He obliged and ran for the stairs.

As soon as he was out of harm’s way, I felt a sharp blow to my back that felt like a bazooka round was colliding full into it.  I was thrown out of the room and even through the metal door leading into the hallway.  (Thankfully I hit the opening mechanism.)  The door took away most of the momentum, so I fell to the floor and skidded along it to the wall of the outside of the office.  My head struck first.

I shakily stood up, every slight jar a race of pain to my brain.  It felt like I had broken every bone in my body.  I hobbled around the wall and through the door.  There, the receptionist took one look at me and signed out a hall pass for the nurse.  She pointed down the hallway towards the high school.  I grudgingly took the hall pass and hobbled out the door; so much for pity.

As I limped out of the office and turned left, a strange tingling sensation raced up my back.  It wasn’t a sensation of pain, far from it.  It felt like something was sewing my broken bones back together.  It was a wonderful feeling, and it made me feel happy, happier than I had felt in literal ages.  The sensation was over in a second, but I wish it had lasted a lifetime.

A butterfly fluttered from behind me, a small blue butterfly unlike any I had ever seen.  Curious as to why a butterfly was in the school, I followed it.  It fluttered down the hall where I was originally going, but it took a sudden turn as it approached the entrance to the school.  I opened the door for it to leave.

I wish I hadn’t.  Outside the school a surge of all kinds of decaying zombies and demons rampaged down the streets.  Their implements were covered with blood, even leaking a trail of it.  The strange devices on their backs also leaked a bloody red.  I quickly shut the door and ran back towards the gymnasium at top speed.  The blue butterfly followed behind me.

I burst through the doors and came upon a surprising scene.  Kurama was standing right in front of the door, spinning a dodge ball on his finger like a professional basketball player.  Everyone on the other side of the room was holding their crotches or their heads, even the behemoth.

I turned Kurama around, locking eyes and knocking the dodge ball from its rotation.  “You know that End of the World surprise I thought you were kidding about?  I believe you now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked quizzically.

I whispered the reply into his ear:  “I see dead people.  Real ones, ones with scythes, swords, and all sorts of equipment built to rip humans apart.  They were walking down the street and—”

The intercom interrupted me.  “Attention please,” the principal announced, “Please do not panic when I tell you this latest news:  A wave of terror is right outside our school with full intent to do bodily harm.  Please stay where you are and try not to panic.  The proper authorities have been informed of our situation and—” a crash of glass interrupted her.  “What?  No, not me!  Get away you— AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!”  The line went dead.

Everyone in this wing of the school screamed simultaneously.  Only Kurama and I kept our heads.  “You stay here and evacuate these wounded soldiers.  I’ll get the rest of the school organized and out of here.”

Kurama nodded his approval and ran up the stairs.  I ran back out of the gym, leaving Kurama to do his work.  With that dodge ball victory under his belt, he ought to garner some respect.

I bolted down the hallway back into the seventh grade hallway.  The screaming hadn’t stopped here, and chaos reigned supreme.  Students and even teachers were running amok throughout the hallway towards the emergency exit door.

However, they found their way blocked by the causes of the emergency themselves.  A pair of zombies each wielding scythes kicked in the doors.  They laughed a sickening cackle and slashed the nearest person to a bloody pulp.

The flow of traffic reversed with this show of violence, leading straight at me!  I ducked inside the door to my immediate right and locked it.  The sound of the stampede brushed past the door, something bumping into it occasionally.  I ducked right behind the door, barring it with my whole self but otherwise relying on the door lock to keep the death and chaos out.  I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing I was safe for now.

The tip of a scythe blade ripped through the thick oak door within an inch of the side of my head.  A drop of blood dripped down from it with a splinter from the door.  Unable to stifle it, I released a terrified shriek.  The zombie on the other end cackled to himself and ripped the scythe out of the door.  He slashed again, this time on the other side of my head.  I let out another scream of terror.  Foreseeing what would come next, I rolled out of the way.  The scythe struck a third time, right where my head had been.

Truly safe for the moment, I looked around my temporary safe house.  I had stumbled into a bathroom, a boy’s bathroom (thank God).  Two of the stalls were occupied, but I didn’t hear any of them being used for crapping.  I curiously looked inside the first one and saw my friend Mark!  He was shaking in his glasses and wearing his usual outfit of jeans with a striped shirt.

“Mark!  What are you doing here?” I gasped.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Mark shot back sarcastically.  “I’m concealing myself in the lavatory of a learning facility being overrun by the physical manifestations of those long deceased!”

“In English,” I stated, an edge of impatience in my tone.

“I’m hiding in here!”

“Along with me,” piped up the person in the other stall.  A quick peek revealed that it was Garrett.  He was also wearing a pair of glasses and a more modern version of Mark’s choice of clothes.

“I think I’ll join you.”

I was about to run towards the stall at the end of the line, but something that phased through the wall shocked me too much to move.  A ghost had appeared right above us!  She looked like one of those harems from olden Arabian days, like the pictures in our history books.  Her raven-black hair was thrown back over her shoulders, tracing down her back in a wave.  Bracelets, earrings, and other jewelry adorned her greenish skin.

“You aren’t going anywhere, big boy,” she said, looking straight at me.  She soared straight at me, her red eyes locked on my stunned figure.

She was stopped in her tracks by a round of blaster fire.  Another ghost phased in through the ceiling, a metallic ghost covered in some sort of high-tech armor.  He looked quite intimidating in it all to say the least.  The aquamarine flames sticking out of his head and the back of his neck resembled hair, as did the flame goatee sticking out of his chin.  The blaster he used to ward off the Arabian ghost was sticking out of his arm, and it was still pointed at her.

“Back off, princess,” he growled.  “This prize is mine.”

The Arabian ghost glared at him.  “Not on your afterlife, Tin Man.  I was here first, so deal with it.”

A familiar sensation raced up my spine.  However, this time I didn’t feel happy; I felt pissed off, as in “stole your girlfriend and dumped her after the first date” pissed off.  My hand glowed with a blue energy unfamiliar to me.  I pointed this energy at the mechanical ghost and shot out a beam of it.  The beam formed into the shape of a butterfly.  It struck the second ghost full in the chest plate, knocking him into the wall.  He collapsed in an exhausted heap.

My two friends looked at me with scared eyes as wide as the toilet seats they sat on.

As I looked over my handiwork, the Arabian ghost took another shot at me.  She flew dead at me, her hands clawed and outstretched.  She phased past my skin and into my body.  I immediately shut my eyes and held my head with my empty hand.  Both burned as if on fire.  This ghost must have been trying to take me over!

Something held onto my sanity, even with the ghost’s ghastly tendrils slowly squeezing it out.  This slight bit of sanity brought the energy-infused hand to my face.  The fingers grasped for something and found it.  When they pulled away from my face, they carried something with them:  the head of the Arabian ghost!  I continued to pull her out of me, regaining control over myself.

I gripped her neck with my open hand and held her before me, the energy of my other one charged and held within an inch of her forehead.  My friendly blue eyes had turned a stone cold black that shone like obsidian.  Without my brain telling it to, something unexpected escaped my lips:  “Back off, bitch.  He’s mine and only mine.”  Another butterfly escaped my hand, dragging her out of the bathroom and, hopefully, to the Hell where she belonged.

The other ghost stood up shakily, several more guns pointed at me, as were two pointing at my friends.  “Come quietly, whelp, or your friends get a belly-full of lead!”

“Actually, you tow your metallic ass out of here, or you’ll be lucky to be wearing a metallic barrel after I’m finished with you.”  The energy on my hand coursed a deeper shade of blue.

The ghost winced.  His bluff had been called.  That was the last time he used empty guns to fake a threat.  Instead, he took a different gun off of his back. 

Garrett looked at that gun as if it were made of solid gold.  “An MG-36,” he breathed, leaning off of his toilet to get a better look.

The ghost grimaced.  “It seems your friend has a large knowledge of weaponry,” he complimented.

“Yeah,” I replied casually, “he could tell you the name of any gun if you only show it to him.  He’s trigger-happy like that.”

“Well, what a coincidence, so am I.”  He fired the shotgun at me, a five-shot burst from a 22-caliber shotgun; just my luck.  I quickly shut my eyes so as not to see the ammunition rip my body to pieces.  I waited a full second, but I didn’t feel anything.  I opened my eye just a hair to see what the problem was.

I didn’t expect what my eyes beheld.

In my line of vision, the shrapnel was moving in slow motion.  Everything was moving in slow motion.  I instantly saw where the lead balls were going to fly, and I maneuvered into the blind spot they left, my hand outstretched to the ghost’s face.  The bullets sped up until they crashed into the wall with full velocity as soon as I was in place.

A sneer crossed my face.  “You have some nerve, you undead bastard.  You threatened my friends, and now you fire on me.  Well, the tables aren’t pointing in your favor anymore, are they?”

I shot out the energy from my hand.  A swarm of the butterflies I had released earlier flew straight at the ghost, knocking the shotgun out of his hands and ripping the armor covering him to shreds.  Metal shards clattered against the tile floor like a shattered glass pane.  The rest of the swarm threw him out of the room.  Hopefully he wasn’t coming back.

Garrett hopped off the john and picked up the gun that the ghost had dropped.  He looked it over, studying the various actions and features.  Finally, he shouted, “This gun is perfect!  Hundred-round drum, folding stock, bipod, full-auto capabilities, even a 3x opt scope with a carry handle!”  He gave the trigger a fresh squeeze, blowing the sink in front of him to smithereens. He only grinned all the wider.

He ran towards the door, unlocked it, and kicked it open.  A small legion of zombies met him on the other side of the doorway.  He held out the barrel of the shotgun and pumped a five round burst into them.  They fell apart along jagged holes blown into them, their blood canisters leaking on the floor.  He ran down the hall like a madman, pumping burst after burst into the zombies before him.  Mark and I did our best to keep up with him.

When we passed the auditorium, I looked through the glass, metal-framed doors.  Inside, Kurama was completely surrounded by a mob of those murderous zombies!

I called to Garrett to come back and help, but he couldn’t hear us over the sound of his own artillery.  I shook my head as Mark and I both ran through the door in order to offer assistance to Kurama.

All of the zombies turned to us, an eyeball or two falling from a rotting socket to the ground.  Their teeth were gnashed at us, again one or two parts littering the floor.  They brandished their weapons at us menacingly, what they hoped to do to us clearly showing on (what was left of) their faces.

Kurama looked around him and noticed the zombies’ distraction.  He smiled to himself and took out a rose, the same rose that I had given him before.  He casually sniffed it, as if there was no one there to watch him.  This rose coursed with a yellowish energy and enlarged.  The stem grew snakelike, edged with brutally thick thorns and a spike at the end.

He snapped the stem into the air like a whip, holding onto the rose-tipped handle.  He slashed one of the zombies nearer to us using this rose-fashioned whip in half and snatched the scythe from his hand all in one clever motion.

He caught the scythe as he reeled in his whip and threw it to me.  “Go!  Get out of here!” he shouted as he slashed another zombie to pieces.

I happily obliged.

…

Running out the door and into the bloody hallway, we took a slight right and ran out the door into the open air.  The buildings across the street were smoking, their walls jagged remnants of what was once a series of homes.

We didn’t have time to mourn their losses; we were too preoccupied with avoiding our own demises.

Another blue butterfly flew into my line of vision.  It flew on a straight course, down the street and towards the high school.  Curious despite the past half-hour’s events, I followed it as Mark followed me.  I grasped the scythe even tighter.

The butterfly led us to a set of trees on either side of the walkway leading to the entrance of the high school.  The butterfly flew up into the branches of this tree.  When it came back down, it was followed by an entire swarm of them, at least a hundred!

These butterflies continued to lead us around the building, until we got to the parking lot around the corner.  They all rested on a motorcycle parked right by a door into the school.

From this door, another pair of butterflies struggling with a jingling package flew out.  They flew right into my hand and dropped off a set of keys.  These were no ordinary butterflies.  “Never have there been any records of such extremely arcane behaviors in any known species of moth or butterfly,” Mark complimented.

However, I couldn’t object despite the fact that I didn’t understand it at that point.  I gripped the keys and made my way towards the bike.  It was a strange one with only one wheel in the back.  The size of the motor on the front could only be described by my limited knowledge of cars as a V800.  There was also a passenger’s seat attached next to the main driver’s seat with an anti-gravity coil attached to its underside, most likely the only source of lift for the front end of it.

A pair of helmets rested on the plush, leather passenger’s seat.  The butterflies dispersed from the helmets when I reached for one and tossed it to Mark.  I grabbed the other one and secured it on my head.  Mark took a seat in the passenger’s seat as I straddled the driver’s, the butterflies scattering as we did so.  I handed the scythe to Mark and gripped the handlebars with one hand, inserting the key into the slot with the other.

I gave the key a quick twist, and the engine roared to life.  It was so loud a person a mile away could have mistaken it for a dragon’s roar.  However, this spike in volume quickly declined, becoming a dull purr in a matter of seconds.  I gave the handlebars a rev, and the volume spiked up again.

I was about to throttle out of the parking lot when the door the key-bearing butterflies came out of was blown off its hinges.  Mark instinctively gripped the scythe tighter as I gripped the handlebars, both of us awaiting the appearance of a zombie.  Instead, Garrett ran out.  His MG-36 was still in his hands, the barrel smoking like a politician’s cigar.  His psychotic smile was clearly displayed across his face and his eyes shone behind his glasses.  Someone had fun in there.

I shook my head and waved him over to us.  He gladly ran over and squished himself next to Mark.  With a rev of the engine and a floor of the gas pedal, we raced out of the parking lot and away from the school.

When we got to the intersection leading onto Northway Road, the butterflies reappeared before us. They flew in a circular pattern before forming into an arrow pointed to the left.

This action perplexed me further.  “Should we follow the butterflies?” I asked my comrades.

“Why not?” Mark replied.  “These are rather intelligent butterflies, almost as much as me.  I say we go for it.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“Mine, too.”  The vote was unanimous.  I eased the bike around the corner and throttled out of sight of the school.