The Girl Who Found the Sun by Matthew S Cox

Author:Matthew S Cox [Cox, Matthew S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950738144
Publisher: Division Zero Press
Published: 2019-12-06T22:00:00+00:00

21

Critter

There is a perfectly logical explanation for everything. However, it’s impossible to have a rational conversation with a child who’s screaming in terror. – Ellis Wilder.

Shaw raised the giant pipe wrench in a two-handed grip, moving to put himself between the unknown creature and everyone else. Trenton screamed and scrambled through the empty shelves where the filters had been into the next aisle before sprinting away. Lark also shrieked and ran, heading to the nearer end of the aisle toward the back of the building.

Tinsley yelled, “Monster!” and bolted in the same direction as Lark—who crashed into something out of sight to the left.

As soon as Lark rounded the corner past the shelf row, she stopped short, screamed again, and backtracked to the left.

The child dashed past the end of the aisle, jumped away from something to her right, flailing her arms as she tried to avoid wiping out. Her plastic sandals slipped out from under her, dumping her to the ground flat on her side. Still screaming in panic, the tiny child slid into a display of plastic tubing and crawled into the narrow space under the shelf.

“Tins!” shouted Raven. Any fear she might’ve had about a creature died, crushed under the need to protect her daughter.

Raven ran after her. The instant she left the aisle, a huge, furry dark shape on her right let out a growl and lunged at her. Caught off guard, Raven screamed. She ducked a furry limb swinging at her face, then darted around the creature, hoping to lead the mutant away from her child. The fleeting second didn’t give her much of a look at it, so her mind filled in a bear-human hybrid more than a head taller than her. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she passed within inches of the hairy monstrosity. Not until she’d taken five or six steps into a run did she realize she gagged on a stink similar to broken sewer lines.

The creature took the bait, chasing her rather than trying to drag Tinsley out from her hiding place. Huffing and growling rushed up behind her. She rapidly approached corner of cinder block walls, but the thing would be on her before she could make it to the turn. Desperation mutated into confidence.

Shouting a war cry, Raven grabbed the katana handle and yanked the blade from its sheath. Two steps later, she spun into a swing—that sank the blade into a plastic bag of dirt. She stood stock-still, breathing hard, staring at the empty corridor behind her. Dribbles of dark brown earth fell from a gash in the side of the plastic bag that had absorbed the front third of the sword.

Faint grunting and the clap of large bare feet distanced down a nearby aisle.

“What the shit was that?” whispered Raven.

The storage building had fallen under an eerie silence, making her fast, raspy breaths seem loud. Everyone else had stopped screaming. No one ran. After a moment, she extracted the sword from the bag, swatting the flat of the blade against her boot to knock dirt off it.

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