Clarissa

By the time I stomped on the brakes, it was already too late. The back of the old-style, wood-paneled station wagon in front of me was too close, and I was going too fast.

My sedan's brakes locked, the tires screeched, and the steering wheel became unmovable under my hands.

It’s not fair, I thought nonsensically. I just got my license—

My sedan rear-ended the station wagon with a crunch of metal and plastic. I jolted against the seatbelt and my right knee smacked the underside of the dashboard hard enough to bruise.

I barely had time to process it, my first car crash, before more tires squealed behind me. I caught a glimpse of an oncoming pickup truck looming large in the rear-view mirror. It struck. My car lurched forward with another snap-crunch of metal.

My little brother, Ben, screamed from the back seat. Above his voice came more screeching tires and smashing glass. Vehicles all around us struck each other in a chain reaction. Our poor sedan shook from the force of collisions up and down the line.

After what felt like an eternity, the jolts stopped. I unclenched my white-knuckled fingers from the steering wheel and took a quick self-assessment. Believe it or not, I didn’t think I was injured. At least, I didn’t see any blood and nothing hurt too badly. That was a good thing, right? The airbag hadn’t even gone off, although the hood of my sedan was buckled like crumpled paper.

I turned to the back seat. “You okay?”

Ben’s blue eyes were wide. “Wow, Clarissa. I think you killed the car.”

Yeah, he was fine. My little brother was a wannabe skateboarder, and made of fifty percent rubber. I’ve seen him trip off his board and roll down a flight of cement stairs just to bounce back up once he reached the bottom.

“That’s not funny,” I told him. Mom was going to be so angry with me. This was our family’s only car.

Then I started to get angry. Why had someone stopped right in front of me in the middle of the freaking highway, anyway?

I unbuckled my seatbelt and looked around. Thick steam poured from the engine and obscured what the scrunched hood didn’t hide. None of this had been covered in my drivers ed class. Was I supposed to call 911?

Then another thought hit me: Logging trucks traveled this road all the time. What if one came around the corner, couldn’t stop, and plowed into us?

“Grab your backpack,” I told Ben. “I don’t think we should stay in the car.”

The driver’s side door hadn’t been damaged. I got out, helped Ben climb free, and stood to look around.

Highway 50 was a two-lane mountain road. Normally, there wasn’t much traffic. Now it had turned into a field of stopped cars in both directions. Gray smoke from multiple engines created a thick haze that drifted through the forest lining either side of the road.

A few people, mostly teenagers around my age, had gotten out of their cars, too. I wasn’t the only one who looked confused.

High, shrill cries filtered in through somewhere in the smoky haze. People were probably hurt. A lot of people. Turning to Ben, I was about to tell him to stay in the car after all—he didn’t need to see this—when a scared voice cut through the air.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

A girl a couple years younger than Ben, about seven or so, tumbled out of a wrecked black SUV which had spun partially onto the gravel shoulder. Scrambling to the driver’s side door, the girl tugged at the handle. “Help! Somebody help her!”

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From behind the tinted windows, I saw a dark figure move.

I didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t have CPR training, or whatever. But I couldn’t just stand there if someone needed help.

I glanced at my brother. Ben was busy retrieving his skateboard from the car and attaching it to special straps on his backpack.

“Stay here, okay?” I told him. "Don't go anywhere."

A dark shadow passed over us both. Instinctively, I looked around. Were medical helicopters landing already?

A large, brown shape swooped down from the smoky sky. For a second, I didn’t know what I was staring at. The thing was feathered and looked a little like an eagle, if eagles were built the size of small ponies and had twelve-foot wingspans. But the body was all animal. Heavily built, with a thick barrel chest, four legs, and a whippy leonine tail.

What—?

The animal landed between the cars and snatched up the little girl with scaly front talons the length of my fingers. It leapt from the ground with strong, furred, back haunches. Laboring for air, it beat its wings as the girl twisted and screamed. Then the monster reached down with a curved beak and—

I unfroze enough to look away. The girl’s scream cut short.

It was as if my body took over on behalf of my stunned mind. There wasn’t any room for thought, or amazement, or a plan. Grabbing Ben by the wrist, I yanked him out of the car and into a run in the opposite direction.

Ben, busy putting on his backpack, hadn’t seen the monster. He tried to tug away, then pulled me to a stop. “Clarissa! Look! What’s that?” He pointed back to our sedan. The truck that had rear-ended us was rocking. Something large and dark moved around in the cabin. And it wasn’t human.

“Oh my God.” I started to change direction, but the van next to us was jolting, too, as something inside threw its weight around. The tip of a curved, orange-yellow beak smashed through the sunroof.

The more I looked, the more I saw unnatural shapes inside most of the cars. Large, feathered things that struggled to break out.

Glass shattered outward from a blue car not twenty feet away. Jumping back, I pushed my little brother behind me. People screamed in shock as they took notice. A girl my age pointed to the sky, where more flying shadows drifted through the haze. Other kids flashed by, running in all directions. No one knew where to go, myself included.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I heard myself say over and over, like my brain was stuck in a loop. Clarissa’s not here right now, but if you leave a message, she’ll get right back to you…

A shadow crossed the hazy sun. I didn’t have time to react before a heavy weight struck my shoulder, slamming me and Ben to the asphalt. I scrambled up to all fours, bits of safety glass and gravel digging into my palms. A second eagle monster—a griffin?—dirty white in color, had swooped down on us and latched its talons onto Ben’s backpack. The edges of its huge wings beat at me like a hurricane as it flapped to gain air.

Ben didn’t move, didn’t scream. He hung in its grip like a dead thing.

“No!” I leapt and grabbed for a loop of Ben’s backpack. Our combined weight dragged the griffin back down before it could fully lift off. In sheer panic, I struck it with my open hands and grabbed its dull white feathers. I’d been in a couple girl-girl fights back in middle school, and learned the hard way that yanking and scratching was more effective than punching. “Let him go! Let go!”

The griffin screeched in a high eagle’s cry and snapped its razor-sharp beak. I hunched forward to put myself between it and Ben. Hot pain drew a line behind my shoulder and I screamed.

“Duck!” yelled a voice.

I flattened down, Ben under me, and heard a dull, wet thwack. The eagle monster jerked.

I twisted to look. A tall boy stood just behind the griffin, a tire iron in hand. Side-stepping a taloned paw, the boy swung like he was going for a home run. The tire iron hit the side of the eagle monster’s head with a sickening crack.

The griffin thrashed one more time before it slumped and went limp, halfway on top of Ben and me.

I tried to shove the feathery body aside. It was shockingly heavy.

“Ben!” I yelled, throwing my whole weight behind my shove. The monster’s body shifted only slightly, and Ben didn't stir at all. “Ben?”

The tall boy stepped in to help. Working together, we rolled the body away. Ben lay between its two front legs, the skateboard attached to his backpack snapped in two. That could have been his spine. Ben's eyes were open and he breathed in shallow, rapid pants. He didn’t react at all when I grabbed him into a fierce hug. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

“There are more of them, coming fast,” the tall boy said.

Tearing my gaze from Ben, I was able to take him in for the first time. He was a little older than me, with dark hair and eyes, dusky skin, and high cheekbones. Mexican or latino, maybe. Handsome, definitely.

Not the time, Clarissa.

Ben still hadn’t moved to get to his feet. “I don’t think my brother can run.” And there was no way I would leave him behind.

“I’ll carry him. Here.” He shoved the tire iron in my hands. The end of it dripped crimson with blood. “If you see another one coming, swing as hard as you can.”

I looked at it, then at him. “Do you know what’s happening?”

He gazed back at me with dark, haunted eyes. “I saw someone turning into one of those… those things.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “I think they used to be people.”