"The hell is that?". Josh murmured.
For three heartbeats, there was only the whistle of wind through the torn fuselage, the groan of dying metal, and the ragged sound of their own breathing.
Ellison's brain, so cold and clear moments before, scrambled to process the impossible.
"I think… or perhaps… an elf?". Josh said awkwardly, trying to make sense of the girl's presence.
Marcus, the random student, took a shuffling half-step forward, his bloodied face slack with a confusion that overrode terror.
"Help, please help me, I'm bleeding?". He begged while clutching his abdomen.
The girl's head tilted further. A faint, alien curiosity flickered in her eyes, which were the color of a deep, still forest. Then, the curiosity vanished, replaced by a flat, assessing blankness. It was the look a human might give to a curious insect before deciding whether to step on it.
The girl moved. It was a sudden, fluid disappearance from one point and a reappearance right in front of Marcus, as if the space between them had simply folded.
Her hand, with its knife-like nails, shot out and clamped onto his shoulder with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. Marcus's scream was cut off before it began.
She pulled him forward, her other hand tangling in his hair, yanking his head to the side to expose his neck. Her jaw unhinged, widening to an impossible degree. For a fraction of a second, Ellison saw the glistening, predatory architecture of that mouth, rows of razor sharp fangs decorated her mouth.
Then she bit down.
It wasn't a clean bite. It was a crunch-squelch-tear. The sound of gristle parting, of vertebrae snapping under immense, precise pressure.
A fountain of arterial blood, shockingly bright and hot, erupted from Marcus's ruined throat, painting the girl's pristine face and golden hair in vivid crimson. She shook her head once, like a wolf with a rabbit, and a chunk of flesh came away.
Marcus's body jerked in a final, spasmodic dance, his feet drumming a pathetic tattoo on the grisly floor, before going still.
Time, which had slowed to a nightmare crawl, snapped back with violent speed.
"RUN!"
The word tore from Ellison's raw throat.
They stumbled backwards, feet slipping in blood and debris. Ellison's eyes were locked on the girl. She was lowering Marcus's remains, her attention already sliding from the finished meal to the two fleeing morsels.
She didn't give chase. She just watched, licking a droplet of blood from her sharp nail with a slow, deliberate swipe of a pitch black tongue.
Ellison spun, shoving Josh towards the jagged hole where the plane's rear had been, They scrambled over the torn lip of the fuselage, falling more than climbing, and tumbled out onto the ground.
The world outside was a tableau of stunned survival. The plane's main body lay broken across a clearing of crushed grass and splintered pine trees.
People, students in ripped jackets, teachers with dazed expressions, were crawling from the wreckage, calling out names with voices cracked by smoke and fear.
Cries of pain filled the cold air. Two seniors were hugging, rocking back and forth. Mr. Henderson, the history teacher, was trying to pry a piece of metal off a trapped student.
It was a scene of human disaster.
"Ellison! Josh!"
Noelle stood near a group of their classmates, her glasses miraculously intact, her face smudged with soot but alive with relief. She waved frantically. "You're okay! Over here!"
They weren't okay. They were vessels of pure panic. Instead of answering, they sprinted towards her, towards the group. Ellison's lungs burned.
"Everyone!" he screamed, his voice breaking. "Get back! Get away from the plane, there's something in there!"
Heads turned, but the faces showed annoyance, not alarm. A woman shushed him. A boy he didn't know glared. They had just survived a plane crash, they were cataloging their dead, tending their wounded. His terror was an unwanted noise.
Mr. Greeley, the math teacher, a thin man with a perpetually sour expression that had now curdled into rage, stepped forward. His shirt was torn, and a cut on his forehead dripped blood into his eye.
"Ellison! You shut your mouth right now! We need order, not your hysterics! Get a hold of yourself and…"
Pierce.
Mr. Greeley choked on his words, he instinctively looked down at his own abdomen, where an arrow head stuck out with the piece of an organ still attached to the tip.
Then the arrowhead bloomed. Four cruel, curved metal petals sprang open, anchoring themselves like a barbed hook. Greeley's eyes went wide.
The next moment, he was jerked off his feet like a marionette with its strings cut. He flew backwards, a short choked scream ripped from his throat as he vanished into the darkness beneath the trees.
The silence that followed for half a second was absolute.
Then the woods spat.
Hundreds of arrows, hissed out of the gloom. They fell among the survivors like deadly rain. A woman was pierced through the thigh and dragged, shrieking, into the undergrowth.
A student clutching his arm was hit in the back and disappeared mid-fall. Chaos, true and absolute, erupted. The orderly survival scene shattered into a stampede of pure panic
Terror took over as people ran in every direction, crashing into each other and trampling over the smaller ones.
Ellison was buffeted by the rushing bodies. He lost his grip on Josh's wrist.
"JOSH!... Noelle"
"ELLISON!".
He saw Noelle's terrified face for an instant before the crowd surged between them. An elbow caught him in the ribs. He stumbled, and the tide of panicked flesh carried him away from the clearing, towards the tree line.
There was no choice. To stay was to be a target in the open. He ran into the woods.
He pushed against the tree branches, ignoring the cuts and stabs as he bolted through the thick foliage, until his foot caught on a hidden root. He pitched forward, tumbling down a steep, muddy slope.
He rolled, the world a blur of brown and green, slamming against rocks and saplings until he landed in a shallow, icy creek at the bottom, covered in cold mud and blooming bruises.
For a long minute, he just lay there, gasping for air, until he slowly pushed himself up. Every part of him hurt. He was in a small, rocky gully, thick with ferns and the trickle of water. The only light was the diffuse, grayish glow filtering through the thick canopy high above.
Ellison tried to steady his breathing, but the air felt thick and suffocating, he clutched his chest and struggled, but the next moment, a strange sound stole his attention.
Hop.
Hop.
A small fluffy creature, no larger than his hand, hopped from behind a fern. It looked like a bunny, but its fur was a soft, bioluminescent blue, and from its forehead grew a slender stalk, tipped with a gentle, pulsing yellow light, like a living firefly or a tiny lantern.
It blinked large, obsidian-black eyes at him. It was absurdly, disarmingly cute. It took another curious hop towards him, its little light bobbing.
"Da Fuck is that?".
At this point, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were no longer on earth.
Ellison instinctively extended his hand to the creature, but when it got close enough, its little mouth suddenly bit down on his finger, instantly drawing blood.
"Aww".
Ellison grabbed the little bunny-like creature and flung it at a nearby tree.
He sucked his wounded finger and exclaimed. "Damn it, I need to find the others".
But the creature in the ferns suddenly began to vibrate. A low, grinding hum filled the air. Its fluffy blue fur rippled, and its body swelled violently, stretching and distorting.
The cute bunny was gone, Standing before him was a nightmare dressed in pastel fur. It was the shape of the Easter Bunny, but thirteen meters tall, towering over the trees.
Its once-soft pelt was now matted and coarse, its friendly face twisted into a snarl, revealing a mouthful of long, needle-sharp fangs. Its paws ended not in harmless nubs, but in curved black claws that dug into the earth.
The little lantern on its head was now a single, glowing red eye in the center of its forehead. It looked at Ellison, let out a guttural growl that shook the leaves, and pounced.
Ellison barely had time to stumble back, before a massive, furry claw swiped at him. Searing pain exploded across his left shoulder as the claws tore through his hoodie and skin. The force spun him around and sent him crashing to the ground.