Clarissa

Something was eating at Terry.

Looking back, I'm sure that it started at the distribution warehouse. We again took a vote on whether we should stick around and watch for signs of other kids were not.

We all wanted to get to Big Sur, and were curious about the promise of the cure that we could find there… But this place was a treasure trove. And maybe, if we could find other survivors, they would have more answers.

Lilly pointed out that they might be big dick's, too.

It was a chance I was willing to take.

But not Terry. He grew visibly upset at the idea.

"We already took a vote on this," he snarled, loading the last of the supplies in the truck that we were using. He slammed the door so hard that it made me jump.

Automatically, all eyes went to the starry night sky.

There was no movement, and I glared at him.

"Keep it down," I hissed.

"Then stop being so stupid," he hissed back. "We need to get to Big Sur. We don't want to stay around here."

"Why?" I asked, and then it hit me. "You saw something in that office, didn't you?"

He paused for a second and then nodded his head, jerkily.

My stance softened, and I felt a little bad. Even though, in the back of my mind, I wondered what it could be.

I had gotten very good at smelling blood, and everything that I had scented in that warehouse was old. We had seen a lot of terrible things during the first day of the turning and on our trip here. What could have rattled Terry so badly?

Well, whatever it was, he wasn't going to share with the rest of the class.

"Load up," he barked. "We need to get going. We still have a few hours of nighttime left."

Dylan and I exchanged looks, and I could see that he wasn't happy.

Lilly wasn't, either. I had the feeling that she had been on the verge of voting to stay.

"Who made you king shit?" I heard her mutter under her breath. But she loaded up, just as Terry told her.

Merlot… she tended to go along with what everybody else did. Ben, too.

Should I push? I wondered.

The itch on my shoulder blade convinced me that was a bad idea.

I couldn't lose sight of the goal. I needed to get to Big Sur as soon as possible.

* * *

I thought that Terry would calm down when we are on the road again. But it was just the opposite. He drove faster than usual. So fast that he ran over something sharp left in the roadway and burst a tire.

None of us knew how to change a tire, and there were dead cars on either side of the road for the taking. Terry snarled and was completely unlike himself as he helped shift supplies from one truck to another.

The new truck we picked was older, but it had a long bed and unlike the other one, the gas tank was still full. If we were lucky and didn't hit any more mega-pileups… It might take us all the way to Big Sur.

"Give me your keys," I told Terry. "I'm driving."

"Fine," he said and slapped them into my hand.

I winced as the metal pricked my palm, but didn't say anything.

Terry got into the back seat of the four-door truck and pulled out something from one of the backpacks.

"What's that?" Merlot asked. Baby Jane dozed fitfully in her lap.

Terry took a long swig, and I knew the answer before he said anything. "It's rum. Want some?"

Merlot wrinkled her nose in distaste and looked away.

He wiggled the bottle at me.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm driving."

"You are such a little goody-goody," he muttered, taking a swig.

Had this been why he'd become so erratic? No, I didn't know much about alcohol, but there was no way he got drunk off of one little sip way back at the distribution center.

Something else was going on.

Well, whatever bug had crawled up his ass, I hope he found a way to get rid of it. His mood sucked.

* * *

Terry's foul mood didn't improve. He even got worse.

"We can still make it," he snapped, pointing in frustration to the west. We had stopped at the base of the coastal foothill mountains. Dawn was threatening at the horizon. It was time to stop and find somewhere else to hide out for the day.

"Are you crazy?" Lilly demanded. Dylan had pulled up the second car and she had clearly heard him grousing. "The griffins will be out anytime now."

Terry opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the first shriek rang through the air.

We had all become old hands at this. The griffins hadn't — yet — broken into houses without cause. So, we stopped at the first building we saw – an old convenience store with only one window busted out. We solved that problem by moving one of the defunct refrigerator units in front of the gap.

Griffins didn't investigate every single building. Not without movement or light to attract them. So we hunkered down in the back. There were a lot of snacks to keep us fed. In fact, we were up to our eyeballs and junk food. Thank goodness for the supplies we had taken from the distribution center.

Terry didn't help us load or unload. At first, I thought that he was going through the supplies. Bottled water was worth its weight in gold.

Instead, after all the supplies were loaded I found him skulking in the back of the store near what had once been the freezer section.

"Are you drinking again?"

Terry looked at me over the rim of a beer he was chugging like he was a college kid in a frat house.

He held up one finger as he drained the last of it and then threw down the empty can on the floor. Then he burped.

"What is going on with you?" I demanded. "Have you become an overnight alcoholic or something?"

He glared at me. "I don't see why is any of your business."

"Yeah… Well, your attitude sucks."

it wasn't the wittiest comeback in the world. I stomped off, grabbing a blanket from the truck and going to the back office with Lilly and Merlot.

Dylan usually slept in the same room with Ben and Terry. I wished just that once that he decided to bunk with the girls. I could have used someone else to talk to.

I was so angry that I couldn't fall asleep for nearly an hour.

* * *

I woke to the sound of singing.

Blearily, I looked around. Merlot and Lilly were both asleep.

The sound was coming from outside the little convenience store breakroom that we used as a bedroom. I got up and slowly headed out.

Sunlight streamed through the windows. Terry was sitting up at the counter by the cash register. He had an old-fashioned CD walkman by his side and was singing along to lyrics.

"Terry, what are you doing?" I asked.

He stopped and pulled the headphones off, grinning at me in a lazy way. The unfocused glint in his eyes told me that he hadn't stopped with the beers. "Hey, Clarissa. When's the last time you saw one of these?" He nodded to the headphones. "It's a CD player. And it has my song. You want to listen?" He held them out to me.

"No, I don't want to listen! What is wrong with you?" I said, frustrated. "You have been a real asshole since the warehouse." I paused. Was this some sort of PTSD? "What did you see in the office? How bad was it?"

The smile fell off his face. He shrugged. "Nothing bad. One of the secretaries had a battery-powered clock on their desk. It still showed the time and date." He shrugged. "Today's my birthday."

I stopped and stared.

"June first. Happy birthday to me," Terry said.

"But… You're still…" I wasn't sure how to finish it.

"So far, I'm still human," he said. "I've been waiting to turn all day, but maybe it's not age."

I wanted to believe him, but…

"You don't think that's it," I said. "You don't think that's true."

I saw a flash of fear in his eyes. "No," he said

My heart went out to him. "What's going on?"

He shrugged. "It started with little things a few days ago… I thought I could smell things more clearly. Blood mostly. I started getting a little queasy when we cooked chili because the beans tasted… off. Then, I found your stash of canned tuna and spam." He looked at me. "It's happening for you, too?"

"Oh no, Terry…" I murmured, horrified.

He shrugged again, and took another sip of beer, wavering slightly. "Come here."

I shook my head. "We have to tell the others…"

"I said, come here…"

I turned and he drunkenly reached for me. His fingers caught the back of my collar and I gasped as I heard my shirt rip.

It wasn't much, but the feathers had been growing longer recently.

I knew even without his startled noise that he had gotten a peak of them. "What the hell is that?" he demanded.

I whirled around. "What's, what?"

"What is that on your back?" he demanded.

By this time, his raised voice had awoken the others. Dylan came out of what had been a walk-in refrigerator. "What's going on?"

"It's nothing," I said to him and Terry both. "It's not spreading… I'm not turning." Not yet…

"This bitch has feathers!" Terry said, and I winced as if I had been slapped. "What the hell, Clarissa? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, why didn't you tell us that it's almost your birthday!" I demanded, stung.

I… Sort of like Terry, in his non-flaky moments. Having him turn against me hurt.

"It's what?" Dylan started to say, then his eyes widened. "Oh no, I forgot. Does anybody have the date? The time?"

"It's June 1st," Terry said. "But I'm fine. She's the one growing feathers!"

He pointed.

By this time, Lilly and Merlot had come out of the back. Jane was fussing and Merlot was trying to shush her.

"What is he talking about?" Lilly demanded.

I looked at Dylan who looked back at me, stricken.

"You have to tell them, Clarissa," he said.

"Tell them what?" Ben demanded. "What's wrong with Clarissa?"

"It's nothing," I started to say, then I stopped. "I looked at Dylan. He nodded, and I saw strength in his dark eyes. It made me feel strong, too.

I turned back to the others. "Back on the first night of the turning, I got hurt. Here. "I turned and touched my shoulder blade. "Instead of scabs, I grew feathers."

Merlot let out a gasp.

Lilly, however, narrowed her eyes.

"See!" Terry said loudly. "She's the one he's turning, not me!"

"It's Terry's seventeenth birthday," I said to the others.

Terry whirled on him, his face crinkling in rage. "Shut up! It's none of your god damn business!"

"Terry," Lilly said, "Keep it down!"

"You shut up too!"

That broke the dam and everyone started talking at once. It was chaos. Merlot was demanding in increasingly shrill tones what we should do. Ben was at my side, demanding to know if I was okay. Dylan was trying to play peacemaker and calm us down, and Terry was yelling, loudly, drunkenly.

Suddenly, Terry lunged and grabbed me by the upper arm. He propelled me outside through the door which he must have kept unlocked.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded. I tried to stop him, but he was shockingly strong. Was this what it had been like when I had pushed Dylan across the basement that one time?

"You can't stay here," he snarled. "Not when you can turn at any second–"

Then we were through the door into the outside in the bright sunlight.

I looked around wildly. I didn't see any gliding griffins… But that didn't mean that we were not within view. They literally had eagle eyes.

"Terry!" I yelled. "Let me back in!"

His hand dropped. With a shove, he propelled me away from the convenience store and turned back to the door.

Only to find it locked behind him.

I heard more yelling from the inside, Dylan arguing with Lilly.

"If they're both human tonight, we can let them back in," Lilly yelled.

Terry wasn't going to take this lying down. He roared with anger and beat on the door with both fists, so ferocious that I found myself drawn back.

There was something animalistic, something insane and out-of-control in his movements. Suddenly, I felt like I was in the presence of a predator.

He was seventeen years old, and he was at the edge.

I didn't want to be around him when he was making so much noise. Turning, I ran for the truck and locked myself in the cabin.

I barely got in and time.

Terry had abandoned the door and was headed for the busted-out window we'd blocked with a refrigerator, but he couldn't get in without climbing through shards of broken glass.

I saw him cut his hand, and tan feathers grew out of what should have been bloody cut.

He reeled, clutching his wrist and staring.

Then he stared at me and realized I'd locked myself in the car and away from him. He suddenly looked up as if sensing danger. "Clarissa… let me in the cab…"

He staggered over to me, and even though his legs should have been working just fine. It was like he was having trouble walking.

Something was moving under his skin.

He was changing.

He looked up and shrieked at the sky, high and piercing and not entirely human. Then he screamed again as he collapsed, his body starting to mutate around him.

I looked away. Within less than a minute, the screams abated.

Suddenly, where a boy had once been, a griffin now stood.

It beat its wings up to the sky, shrieking its rage the entire time.