BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (4 page)

Beating her wings
vigorously, Kurma laughed in her head at the thought of
it.
 
Wings
. She somehow had grown wings,
and was hundreds of feet in the air. If she could fly, were there
others like her that could fly too? Had someone made her like this?
Had she drank something bad and not known there were DNA-altering
properties in it? Certainly her genetics had been dramatically
changed. There was no denying it. But Santino wasn’t like her. So
had he eaten or drank something else that had turned him into a
flesh-eating mega-monster capable of jumping from outrageous
heights and surviving? Had he survived the jump because he was
already dead? If he were dead, and ate people, did that make him a
vampire?
  

Oh my
God
, thought Kurma.
 
Vampires are
real!
 
No, he
had been in daylight. Not full daylight, because the sun was
setting, but still, he definitely hadn’t burst into flames when the
light hit him. So the vampire idea was done.
  

And why was it that
whoever he touched began to act just as weird as he did? Not eating
people per se, but obviously something was causing them to stop
running and lay on the ground as if the air had been knocked out of
them.
  

So many questions went
through Kurma’s head as she flew eastward. Winged and loving it,
she tried to imitate the birds she saw in the distance. She
remembered stuff about currents and wind streams, but she didn’t
know the first thing about being a bird. She still thought of
herself as human, even though she wasn’t.
  

Kurma’s wings had
naturally taken over, and they didn’t grow tired. Her arms were
attached to the wings’ muscles as if the flaps of skin were sewn
along
 
the
bone. She felt her arms riding the air, and her legs were sprawled
out behind her as if she were floating in a pool of water. The wind
was rough; she felt it on her face. Her body, however, didn’t feel
anything except a soft breeze. Kurma felt a piece of something
between her legs and knew she had a slight tail.
  

What could a tail be used
for on a bird?
 
She thought, though she didn’t really like calling herself a
bird. She resembled a flying dinosaur, kind of. Like a Raptor. Yes,
that was what she would call herself. It had a nice ring to it. If
anybody asked her what exactly she was, she would reply, ‘A
Raptor!’
  

And then they would try to
put her in a circus. Her life as she knew it was
over.
  

Kurma felt the sun’s warm
rays on her skin as its last light faded over the horizon. She saw
orange, pink, red, and yellow hues as the fluffy clouds concealed
her from the ground below.
 
She decided to fly lower to
the ground now that she had the darkness protecting her. Tiny
lights popped on by twos as dusk turned into night. Up high Kurma
could hear the wind whistle and the hustle and bustle of the day
slow down as she neared the downtown area of Alexandria. The city
was made almost entirely of buildings: office buildings, factories,
houses, apartments, lofts, warehouses, schools. There were only a
couple of parks, woods, ponds, and stretches of empty lots left.
Kurma saw the infamous skyscrapers of her city as tiny little
figures, like gray and silver Legos. The streets were invisible
amongst the large buildings.
  

Since she couldn’t fly
forever, Kurma knew she would have to find a place to land for the
night and recuperate. She couldn’t think of any area that would
allow her coverage from people, and that was enclosed. Kurma
thought and thought about what she would do and where she could go.
She knew she couldn’t go back home. What would she tell her mom?
Were her brothers worried about her? She hoped everything that had
happened to her would not happen to them. If only she knew how she
had turned into a Raptor then maybe she could stop it from
happening to them. She thought again about what she had eaten or
drank, or even if she somehow had nipped her hand on something
poisonous. There was nothing she could remember that could have
caused her to grow wings, scales, and a metal dagger attached to
her wrist.
  

Finally she thought of
somewhere she could go to land: the Alexandria landfill. She had
gone there on an elementary-school field trip with her class some
years back. The place was filled with the city’s disgusting trash
and recycling, but there weren’t many people working in the
landfill, and there was plenty of coverage from the enormous piles
of waste and debris. Directing her arms to head south, she flew
straight toward the landfill.
  

As she got close, the
stench that surrounded the entire place greeted her. Even the
gassy-green clouds above the landfill seemed murky and thick. Kurma
flew closer, but knew she
 
couldn’t stay there unless she
had a face mask. Even though she was now a Raptor, it seemed as if
she still had regular lungs, and she couldn’t breathe in this kind
of environment.
  

Although she had flying
down for the most part, Kurma worried about landing. Over and over
she swooped in circles around the hazy-looking landfill. The
landfill seemed alive, the garbage and trash shifting and piling on
top of itself. Workers busily emptied dumpsters and containers of
waste onto the piles, and Kurma flew in circles still. She was
nervous; she was afraid her legs would give out and she would break
one of her wing bones if she wasn’t careful.
  

Kurma made her body turn
downward as she prepared to dive face-first to the ground since
every time she tried to drop feet first, the wind created a
parachute blockage in her wings, which only made her float more.
Nervously she sped toward the ground and tried to aim for a clear
space. Her face sliced the air as she descended lower and lower. A
couple of feet from the ground, she made her body pull up slightly
to level out, so her feet would have a chance to come from behind
her. But she overshot, and ended up pulling her feet forward so
much that her new tail caught the edge of a pile of trash. Gravity
took care of the rest as Kurma rolled and stumbled, wings and all,
halfway down the mountain of junk.
  

Emerging from the garbage,
Kurma gagged on the horrendous smell. Old diapers, spoiled food,
and dirty everything was all around her. Picking through the rubble
was harder than landing. Her hands and wings became smeared with
gunk, and the hairs on her body clung to her skin in
patches.
  

“
Ugh, my
God, this is going to be the death of me,” she said. Trying to stay
hidden, she made her way to the edge of the landfill, where the
gates sectioned off the rest of Alexandria. Kurma clawed her
fingers through the holes in the fence and peered out into the
darkness, then looked behind her. The landfill was semi-bright so
personnel could see what they were doing,
 
and partially hidden by the
main building that accommodated the workers. Kurma couldn’t stay
there, though. This kind of place ran all night and through the
day.
  

Kurma looked up and saw
barbed wire around the entire gate. Climbing inch by inch, she made
her way to the top of the gate and flung her body over, her wings
barely missing the razors. Under the night’s cover, she made her
way to the edge of Minister’s Lane, a dried sewage line that kids
her age used sometimes for drag races. Kurma knew her classmates
might have been there, after all it was the weekend. She
wanted to cross Minister’s Lane and head up to one of the city’s
parks, Dover Park Square. Even though homeless people lived there,
tonight they would have to make room for something a little
different.
  

Kurma wondered if she was
stuck as a Raptor forever. As she neared Minister’s Lane, the dirt
turned into concrete, and she noticed her feet, which were now
claws, had sharp nails. Every step she took, the nails scraped
against the concrete.
 
Tip
,
 
tap
,
 
pit
,
 
pat
. She would not be able to hide
if she made noise with every step. She needed to change back, but
how and where?
  

As she entered Minister’s
Lane, she saw an old, abandoned car. Quickly she hurried over to it
and tried to pry the rusty door open. A bum popped up inside,
toothless and dirty. The bum opened his mouth in rage; Kurma jumped
back in fear, and caught herself with an outstretched arm. Clearly
she had disturbed his sleep. She didn’t even think he noticed how
she looked at all.
  

Off to the side of the
lane, she heard a commotion.
 
Shit, this isn’t
good
, she thought. All she wanted to do
was try to turn back into a regular person. Once people saw her
wings, she wouldn’t know what to do—she’d probably have to run all
her life so she wouldn’t end up in someone’s collection, stuffed
and gagged for everyone to see.
  

Kurma saw three young boys
heading in her direction. Her Raptor eyes had night vision, and she
could see the tiniest movements magnified. One of the boys had a
limp, and the other
 
two were skinny and ragged. If
necessary she could fly away, but then they might tell somebody who
would tell somebody, and that person might alert the cops, or worse
the news reporters. Shaking her head, she knew she would have to
make a run across the entire lane without being spotted. There was
absolutely no chance of that, since the lane wasn’t really a lane
but a huge, open space with concrete walls.
  

“
Damn,”
Kurma whispered as she dashed from behind the old car and across
the lane, right in front of the three boys’ line of
sight.
  

“
Do you
see this?” asked the tallest boy.
  

“
What is
that!” screamed one of the others.
  

“
Let’s
get it. Come on, y’all. Catch it!” said the
third.
  

Kurma heard the three
little stooges running behind her, trying to catch her. She was too
fast though, and way long gone. With the agility of a cat, she used
her claw-like hands to climb the concrete walls and her
sharp-nailed feet to tear into the sides so she wouldn’t
fall.
  

“
You
guys see that?” one of the boys cried out. “Get this on camera. We
gonna be famous!”
  

“
Try and
climb up after it.”
  

“
Are you
crazy? What am I gonna do with it once I climb up
there?”
  

“
I’ll do
it,” proclaimed a voice.
  

How these boys could be so
stupid, Kurma had no clue. If she had found something that looked
like her, she would have been running the other way, not toward it.
Boys were made up of different chromosomes, though, and they tended
to think after, not before.  
  

Kurma made it to the top
of the wall and felt the earth beneath her feet. In front of her
was another gate, fencing off Minister’s Lane from things such as
the three stooges below. She turned and saw the boy with the bad
leg trying to climb the wall.
  

“
Look,
it’s looking at us,” said one of the other boys. He had curly hair
and green eyes, and jagged teeth. “You see how big that thing
is?”
  

“
It
looks like a lizard. A big ol’ white lizard,” said the other one
still on the ground.
  

After a good attempt, the
boy with the bad leg stopped trying to climb up the wall and
returned to stand with his friends. He gazed up at Kurma, who was
looking down at them. “No it doesn’t, you moron. It looks like an
oversized bat. You see? It has wings. It must have gotten bit by a
bat and turned into Batman.”
  

“
And you
call me a moron,” one of the others said, and both laughed at the
boy with the bad leg.
  

Kurma turned to leave. On
the other side of the gate was Dover Square Park, and there
wouldn’t be any annoying little boys there who would insult her by
calling her a lizard. If anything the bums in the park would be so
stoned and drunk that the sight of her would be a mediocre surprise
at best.
  

Kurma smelled pine trees
as she crossed into the park. This was the only place in the city
where trees and plants were allowed to grow. The mayor had
sanctioned it off years ago for greenhouse usage. Flowers were
sparse in the city, but not in Dover Square
Park.
  

She crept under the moon’s
light and tried to stay hidden. Kurma saw homeless people sleeping
under the canopy of trees and old tents. Maybe this was the exact
place she needed to be. She remembered there was a museum in the
northern part of the park. As a kid she used to play on the
gargoyles at the entrance. The museum was made entirely of stone,
with stone stairs
 
that led up to a second floor and pillars and columns made of
rock all around. All the statues were made of stone too. Kurma
could remember how her mother used to tell her that if she was bad
she would have to live there, with no lights or food. The museum
was long since abandoned, and Kurma was sure there would be people
living in the stone rooms now, though she hoped not all of them
would be occupied.