Tears of the River by Rottman Gordon L

Author:Rottman, Gordon L. [Rottman, Gordon L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Young Adult Action-Adventure Fiction
Publisher: Hartwood Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

A strangled screech and piercing scream jolted her awake. She rolled out of the hammock taking Lomara with her, both smacking on the ground. The girl screamed. Karen groped for both the flashlight in the hammock and the machete stuck in the ground.

Finding the light first she snapped it on and swung the beam around, dazzling her own eyes. Everything was as black as her nightmare planet except what was surreally illuminated by the light’s yellow tunnel. Chickens squawked. Her heart raced like a sprinter’s. There was a glint of yellow eyes and they were gone. She swung the beam back, heard bark-scratching noises, Tía shouting, “¿Quién es?” her voice edged with panic. Lomara shouted “¡Mamá!”

More scratching sounds. A flash of fur on a tree trunk. Karen was up and under the tree shinning the light up. “Well, for Pete’s sake.”

The masked eyes of a raccoon peered down at her. It hissed defiantly.

Tía was laughing. Lomara was hanging onto Karen’s leg. A stick bounced off the limb being flung by Jay, a bold feat on his part. The bandit scurried farther into the tree’s crown.

Then it wasn’t so funny when Karen swung the flashlight around. The agitated chickens were on the ground below their roosting bush and one was dead, partly decapitated.

“Great.”

Tía said something a little more expletive.

They were lucky. Raccoons might be cute, but they were pitiless mass murderers. If one got into a chicken coop, he tore apart, not just killed, every bird he could catch and then only ate part of one. They were sharing an island with a hungry, psychopathic killer. “Just friggin’ great.”

Once up a tree there was no way to get at him. They’re edible, she reminded herself. At home they even lived in the suburbs, the little murderous bandits are everywhere throughout North and South America.

Well, take advantage of the situation. She immediately started ripping handfuls of chicken feathers out as fast as she could. They had no pot of boiling water to dunk it in to make this an easy job. She had to do it before the murder victim’s body cooled.

“Jay, hold the flashlight for me, please.”

Lomara settled down and climbed back into their hammock. Tía asked Karen if she knew how to clean a chicken.

“Sí sé, Tía.”

It was one of those things they’d done in survival classes. She had no idea what time it was. Dark-thirty was all she could guess.

She lopped off the head and feet, cut out the neck pipe and crop. She slit the belly open and worked her hands inside loosening the innards, careful not to pierce them. With everything loosened, she simply pulled it all out in a double handful. She removed the liver, gizzard, heart, and spleen. With Jay lighting her way, she dumped everything at the far end of the island to appease the raccoon and keep it away from the surviving chickens.

“You did that barehanded,” said Jay.

“Shine the light here,” she asked. She knelt at the water’s edge washing her hands. “It’s only yucky the first time you do it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.