March 30, 2010.

A/N: Readers! Letting everyone know that this chapter may be a little darkfic XD There's a bit of horror - well, as much as I could stomach myself (not much of a horror fan :P) - so be prepared. This isn't a happy-happy sparkly-power fic. This is meant to be slightly more realistic.

Thanks again to Kyasarin Freakload, for reviewing :) Aishiteru. Come to the forum more :D

Read on, with steeled nerves XD

Rated T for language.

Searching for Solace

- FOUR -

2007

March 6 – 14:16

Mackenzie was in the middle of sitting a mock English SAC when it happened.

Later, she would marvel at the absurdity of the coincidence; that, somehow, the two events that were possibly the most monumentous in her entire life had both happened during extremely important examinations.

At the time, though, she just freaked out.

She was pondering the third paragraph of her essay response to the prompt about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night when she first heard the noise. It was like a low, nondescript rumbling – maybe a truck on the highway, or a plane overhead. Nothing extraordinary. Except for the fact that, a few minutes later, it was still there. And it was louder. A funny feeling settled in the pit of her something; the sense that something wasn't quite right.

Within minutes, Mackenzie's sneaking suspicion grew into full-blown anxiety. She couldn't put a finger on what she was feeling, or why she was feeling it; the closest explanation she had was that it was instinctive. Some weird sense she had – that didn't belong to the previous five defined senses – was telling her to panic. She tuned into the humming and out of her exam. By this stage the rumbling was louder, and others had started noticing. The ground had even started to hum in a soft tremble.

Perhaps a minute later – max two – the school was like a sci-fi horror movie.

As Mackenzie tried to scribble a quote she couldn't properly remember for her essay, movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. When she moved her head, she wished like hell that she could retrace the action and not have done it. Because in that moment, everything turned upside down.

Outside the window, a huntsman the size of a car was crawling towards the building. Its eight eyes winked creepily in the sun. The hairs on its multiple legs were like long blades. Instant utter terror seized her and froze every single muscle in her body. She couldn't even unstick her throat to scream. But she didn't have to. Someone outside did it for her.

After that, it was simply chaos. What exactly does one do when they spot a spider big enough to bite their head off lurking by the door? Mackenzie thought to herself, in an absurd state of delirium. The horrified shouts and shrieks of her classmates fell on her deaf ears; it was like she was in a sound proof room. Everything was strangely foggy. Whether it was because her biggest fear was of spiders, or because she had the odd sense of déjà vu – that she'd known this was coming – she couldn't tell.

People were suddenly running everywhere. The two teachers supervising the mock-exam shouted above the noise to try and restore a sense of calm, but by that stage, the arachnid was tapping the glass with two of its legs, and people were screaming like banshees. The particularly frightening thing was the alarming shuddering of the windows. If Mackenzie didn't know better, she'd have thought the glass wasn't strong enough to hold.

Unsurprisingly, Mackenzie was wrong. She rarely knew better, and as she watched, two spider-web-like fractures cracked in the glass. Everyone backed instinctively towards the door at the opposite end of the hall. It only took one more hit for the panels of glass to shatter completely. When people realised that this meant the spider had gained entrance to the room they were taking refuge in, chaos transformed quickly into utter terror.

The door they were all crowding around was thrown open, and students and teachers flooded outside. Mackenzie found herself swept along like a leaf in a river. It became quickly apparent, however, that outside was no safer than inside. The screams were much worse, and there were people everywhere, running in all directions. As Mackenzie gazed dazedly around she realised this was because, along with the gigantic huntsman that had gatecrashed their mock-exam, there was a centipede the size of a school bus blocking the front gate, a cockroach the likes of the animations in Men in Black scuttling behind the cafeteria, and several pillow-sized wasps hovering above the outdoor basketball courts.

Plus, there was a general oddness to her surroundings, which she couldn't place at first. Then she noticed that everything seemed to be shining. Focusing her gaze, she realised that this was due to the fact that the air was filled with tiny, transparent, glowing spheres with tentacles, about the size of a tombola marble. The biggest ones were the size of her fist. She had no idea what they were, but she couldn't feel them when she reached out. It was the most curious sensation, like they were projector images, not solid matter.

When Mackenzie tore her focus from the little glowing orbs to more pressing matters – like oversized insects rampaging her school – she realised that they weren't simply 'oversized bugs'. When one cornered a year eight girl by the drinking fountain and stung her in the shoulder with a stinger like a fencing sword, she came to the horrifying conclusion that the creatures were either carnivorous or murderous, and she didn't know which was worse. She watched the girl slump, unconscious, down the brick wall, blood welling through her dress from the wound, and bile rose up her throat. Reeling, she retched into a tin rubbish bin, expelling the contents of her stomach. Her hands, gripping the sides so hard her knuckles were white, trembled violently.

As screams of terror mixed with screams of pain, and wails of petrified students meshed with the school's fire alarm, Mackenzie swung from the bin and lurched away. She couldn't stay here. None of them could stay here. It was dangerous – they could actually possibly die. Above the general uproar were the very audible, very inhumane shrieks of the engorged insects, which made her skin crawl, and set her teeth on edge.

Deciding the front entrance was inaccessible, she set course for the back gate.

It didn't seem as though many other students had reached similar trains of thought yet. As she ran blindly through the mundane brick buildings, weaving her way towards the edge of campus, she noticed an alarmingly large number of kids trying to take refuge inside classrooms. As she passed by the arts centre, one enormous spider leg poked out of the door, and she foolishly risked a glance inside. Blood smeared the floor like a bathroom had flooded, and she didn't want to know where it had come from. For once, she had a horrible feeling her guess might actually be correct.

She whirled around the side of the building and collapsed against the wall, relishing in the quiet and gasping for breath – a mixture of pure terror, adrenaline, and having just run five minutes without stopping. Mackenzie had never been a fit girl.

Her mobile rang. Wrestling it out of her pocket, she flipped it open without thinking.

"Max! Where are you?! Are you okay?"

"I-if I've answered, th-then obviously I'm n-not dead!" she gasped, her voice trembling as badly as her hands. "Wh-what's–?"

"I don't know, but they're everywhere! Massive animals, like – huge! We don't have them here, luckily – but apparently they're targeting schools, whatever they are."

"B-bugs," Mackenzie gasped. "And I… I-I think they're k-killing people."

She realised the weight of what she'd just said, and burst into tears. At the other end of the line, Morgan was exclaiming and shouting, but she couldn't really hear her. People were dying here. Being killed by bugs. Could it get anymore insane? Surely this was just an awful nightmare she'd concocted.

"Max! Listen to me! Listen! Stop hyperventilating – take deep breaths." Mackenzie latched onto her voice and focused hard – it was so easy to feel herself slipping into hysteria, but if she forced herself to focus only on Morgan, she could feel herself dragging herself slowly back to sanity.

"Nice and easy… that's right. In… out… In… out…" Morgan's voice said soothingly. "Do you understand what I'm saying? I need you to listen carefully, okay?"

"M-hmm," Mackenzie whimpered.

"Good. I'm coming to get you, alright? I'll be behind your school in ten minutes. Meet me by that dented bus stop sign. Don't move from there. But if I don't show up, wait five minutes and then get yourself home somehow."

"What–?"

"Ten minutes, okay?"

"O-okay."

"Stay safe." With a click, she was gone, and Mackenzie was back with the silence. Or so she thought. As she slipped her phone into her pocket, ignoring the faint screeching of the insects and the frightened screams of students, she became aware of a muffled thumping behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled; she turned slowly.

Eight pairs of twinkling black eyes stared at her from behind the glass windows, so close it was like looking into a mirror. Her heart leaped into her mouth, pure terror stabbed violently at her heart, and a scream stuck in her throat. Because it was actually sixteen eyes, not eight. Two enormous huntsmans sat side-by-side behind the windows, looking at her as though they couldn't quite work out why they couldn't get to her. Simultaneously, they reached up with their front legs and started whacking against the glass.

Mackenzie stumbled backwards, tripping on the lip of the pavement and sprawling ungracefully, scraping her palms against the concrete. Her eyes never strayed from the windows. Moments later, as she struggled backwards in an awkward sort of upside-down crawl, one shattered, and then the other. She screamed a piercing shriek as shards of glass rained down around her. And then they were crawling through, and she was half-dragging, half-stumbling to her feet, and running full-bolt in the opposite direction.

Get to the gates, get to the gates, get to the gates.

Well, she got to the gates. But why she thought that getting through the gates would stop two determined, car-sized spiders to give up chase, she didn't know. She exploded through the gate and onto the road, whipping around to see whether they were being magically detained. And they were right behind her, scrabbling up the fence, since they weren't small enough to fit through the gate. It was all legs of the worst kind.

The terror that gripped Mackenzie when she realised she wasn't safe yet was absolutely crippling. There were only two things occupying her thoughts: get out of danger, and get to the bus stop. How many minutes had it been, anyway? Three? Six? Fifteen? Morgan could have been and gone already. Or she might not even be halfway there yet.

The spider shrieks behind her inspired her to run again. The bus stop wasn't far from here. If she could just get somewhere and hide until Morgan came… The most terrifying sound was the rapid thock-thock-thock-thock-thock of spider legs against the asphalt. It was like the sound of running your fingers along the keys of a keyboard without the power on, only amplified. And they were bloody fast spiders.

There it was! And, by some miraculous act of fate, there was Morgan, in her mother's car. Well, it looked a little bit like her mother's car. In actuality, it was like a bashed up version of it; dented severely, horribly scratched, and one of the headlights was smashed. A snap behind Mackenzie reminded her of the vicious fangs that were hoping to make a meal of her, and she squealed and scooted forward, making a beeline for the car. Morgan, who had watched the trio careen around the corner, sat with her mouth open and her eyes bugged. When sense kicked in again, she leaned over and threw the passenger car door open, letting the car roll forward at a pace that would allow Mackenzie to clamber in.

"Get in!" Morgan screamed hysterically as Mackenzie pulled the door wider. "Hurry! Get in!"

Mackenzie was trying very hard to do just that, but it was being made considerably more difficult due to the beam-like spider legs trying to stop her.

"They're fucking smart!" she wailed in frustration and terror, as her way was barred. "Move the car forward!"

Morgan obeyed, and a small gap was created between the cage of spider legs. Mackenzie dove for it without thinking, and was almost in the car when something grabbed her from behind. Morgan screamed mindlessly. The spider legs, it seemed, came with hook-like structures at the end. One had latched itself onto the hood of Mackenzie's jacket. She struggled against it for a moment, shrieking angrily, and reached with one bloody hand to unzip the front.

With a lurch, the jacket was ripped from her arms, yanking at her shoulders painfully, but she was free. From nowhere, another leg grabbed at her, ripping through the back of her school dress and scratching her back. Scorching hot pain exploded across her skin and a cry was ripped from her lips.

"Drive!" she shrieked, and Morgan hit the accelerator. With a screech of tires, the Holden commodore shot forward, and Mackenzie only just had time to right herself in her seat when the door swung shut heavily behind her.

Morgan – who had been on her p-plates for about a month – executed a terrible u-turn that almost took out a parked car, and floored it back up the road, taking what was meant to be a fifty zone at about eighty-five. The two very bemused spiders actually flinched and braced for impact as the car roared towards them, but leaped aside at the last moment, like they were playing some sick version of chicken.

With the realisation that they were safe – at least temporarily – silence fell over the best friends, broken only by the rapid, wheezy breaths escaping their chests and the roar of the engine as Morgan directed them home. They said nothing, for once, but sat out the short journey in a state of numb shock, lost entirely in their whirling thoughts.

CULTURE NOTE

SAC - School Assessed Coursework. When you take a year 12 subject, you have to sit a series of tests/assessments, the marks of which directly affect your final mark for that subject, and therefore affect your ENTER score, and therefore affects whether you get into university or not XD There's a lot of pressure on SACs. Most subjects have between 6 and 10 for the year.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - is a book a lot of high school students study. I haven't read it myself; I think I read the first few chapters in year eleven... :/

Rubbish bin - Trash can.

Mobile - Cell phone.

Fifty/Eighty-five - kilometres per hour, not miles. Keep that in mind as you're reading other chapters.

A/N: Think HP: Chamber of Secrets... Aragog, but not so gigantic XD

I told you it would speed up. Well, now it's sped up, and it'll stay fast from now :)

Review? Please?

Until the next update,

Love,

Cherrie xx