Sunny
with a Chance of
Monsters
by
Sara King
and
Fred Garnet
Copyright © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Sara King and Fred Garnet
No part of this work may be photocopied, scanned, or otherwise reproduced without express written consent of the author and/or artist. For permissions and other requests, email Sara King at [email protected] or Fred Garnet at [email protected] .
(Don’t worry, they’re really cool.)
Disclaimer
(a.k.a. If You Don’t Realize This Is A Work Of Fiction, Please Go Find Something Else To Do)
So you’re about to read about alternate realities and floating philosopher’s stones and massive dome cities and interdimensional monsters. In case you’re still confused, yes, this book is a complete work of fiction. And, while the book takes place in a changed timeline in a place that does exist (Alaska), the buildings, businesses, and people contained within these pages are figments of our (very active) imaginations. If there are still similarities between the people or places of Sunny and the people or places of our current reality, you’ve just gotta trust us. It’s not real, people. Really.
Author’s Note
This book is a pulp fiction collaboration written by three lifetime friends writing under two names. Sara King is the successful sci-fi/fantasy author of The Legend of ZERO , Alaskan Fire , and Outer Bounds . Fred Garnet is an amalgamation of Sara’s best friend Shaye Marlow, author of the steamy Alaskan Romance series, and Chancey King, the brain behind the wildly popular The Legend of ZERO and Outer Bounds series. Each is a fantastic writer in their own right. With their powers combined…
Well, you’ll see.
Upcoming Sunny Day Novels
Keep an eye out for these upcoming Paranormal Badass novels:
Sunny and the Seed of Destiny
Sunny and the Suspicious Spa
Dedication
Sara:
To my fans.
It’s been a long struggle, but I think—if this book is any proof—that I’m finally back on my feet. Thanks for your patience.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to our significant others for understanding when we disappeared for hours on end, and for keeping us sane while we cackled long into those summer nights. Thank you also to our error-hunting beta-readers, and to you, reader, for checking out the epic product of our collaboration.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
Author’s Note
Upcoming Sunny Day Novels
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Girl in the Ambulance
Chapter 2: A Wanted Woman
Chapter 3: To Poach or Not to Poach…
Chapter 4: Gabriel Dortez, Workaholic
Chapter 5: The Dreamer
Chapter 6: Bagging a Bounty
Chapter 7: The Issue with DPS
Chapter 8: Reconnaissance
Chapter 9: Round Two
Chapter 10: Getting Out
Chapter 11: New Plan
Chapter 12: Another Dunking
Chapter 13: Devaputra
Chapter 14: Family Ties
Chapter 15: The Pact at Eklutna
Chapter 16: Confrontation
Chapter 17: Free Burgers
Afterword
Chapter 1: The Girl in the Ambulance
The little girl’s rain-dampened body jiggled as it was shoved into the ambulance by Sunny’s partner and two Dome Police officers standing on the drenched curb outside. Pulling the gurney into the ambulance with her, Sunny had never seen so many bullet wounds, let alone on a child. The kid had been shot in the head, the neck, the torso, both arms and one leg. So many bullet holes in her little white dress, but so little blood. Her wet, bullet-shredded body showed only a couple small blots of crimson, nothing more.
“We were told it was a drive-by,” Sunny said, as she got the gurney secured. “Was anyone else shot? What about her parents?” Usually the target of a drive-by wasn’t a little girl, and there were probably more victims somewhere…
“No, just her.” A heavyset, stone-faced police officer climbed into the back with them to escort the patient to the hospital, as was standard procedure with criminal injury. His vest read Sgt. D. Gilles. Harris jumped into the back after him and yanked the door shut. Like a lot of Inuit, Harris Tulugaq was a squat, dark-skinned, ebony-haired, good-natured gorilla of a man who was always ready to smile. It was one of the reasons Sunny was marrying him that August.
“Someone actually targeted a kid?” Sunny asked as she checked for a pulse. Mind-blowingly, there was one, and it seemed unreasonably strong.
“Yeah, that’s all we know. Some sort of hit squad. Guys with uzis.” Harris banged on the ceiling of the ambulance with a thick fist. “Drive!” Immediately, the heavy thrum of the ambulance accelerating was like a solemn promise of deliverance, the feeling that someone with more skills, training, and equipment would soon take over.
The little girl’s lips moved as she tried to say something. She was able to form the words with her mouth, but multiple lung punctures were making her struggle for air. It sounded a lot like, “Close…”
“She’s having trouble breathing,” Sunny said. “Possible tension pneumothorax.”
“I’ll get to it after I get an IV in her.”
“How can she still be conscious?” the cop asked.
“We see a lot of weird shit,” Harris said. He was already starting an IV in the child’s one undamaged leg—everywhere else was pretty much shot to shit, ragged meat vaguely attached to bone. “Could’ve been wearing body armor.”
Like Harris, Sunny automatically fell into her training, the A-B-Cs of emergency medicine—Airway, Breathing, Circulation—a nine-year routine that had become a mantra for her. After ascertaining that nothing was blocking the girl’s airway, she cut the girl’s dress away and did a head-to-toe assessment to find and treat the most critical injuries, all the while making a mental tally of the damage. As she rolled the girl onto her side to check her back, however, Sunny did a double-take.
I can feel her heartbeat, she thought, staring at the ripped chunks of muscle peeking through the left-side ribcage. That’s not possible.
“Gotta move this along,” Harris reminded her.
Sunny shook herself. “Got large exit wounds in the back near the heart.” They looked like they’d actually gone through the heart, blown the heart out of her body , but when she checked her pulse a second time, she again felt a heartbeat, so Sunny knew that couldn’t be true. “Need a tourniquet on her left arm—elbow down is pretty much gone. I’m counting at least forty bullet wounds, kinda hard to tell which ones are entrance and exit wounds where they’re doubling up. Probably more like fifty.”
The girl, meanwhile, kept reaching for Sunny, saying, “Close…”
The cop must have seen the pieces of her heart protruding from the back of her ribcage, because he said, “That’s some fucking vampire shit right there.” To the driver, he shouted, “Hey, step on it! I just saw pieces of this kid’s lungs on the goddamn gurney.” Around them, the ambulance’s engine increased its tempo, and the sirens sounded.
What the cop didn’t know, but Sunny did, was that it didn’t matter how fast they went—nobody
lived after their heart was blown to pieces. And it was her heart… Wasn’t it? Sunny checked the pulse again. Strong. That was…weird.
Further, the girl had at least four bullets to the brain, possibly five, if a bullet had slipped through her ocular cavity without damaging tissue—it was hard to tell. It was probably adrenaline keeping the girl moving, and as soon as her oxygen ran out and her brain realized that her body was no longer in one piece, she’d go into shock and die. She didn’t correct Officer Gilles, however, because she knew it probably made the cop feel better to do something.
Harris, though, knew the score.
“You wanna go get something to eat tonight?” he asked as he worked. “There’s that Asian buffet that’s having a two-for-one special.” She had moved into Harris’s apartment last month, and they were planning on announcing their engagement to their parents later that week. He also had an iron stomach, and wouldn’t lose a moment of sleep tonight over the shooting death of a little girl.
On the other hand, Sunny, who was still categorizing the many wounds and noting the strange lack of blood, already knew it was going to be a rough night for her. To the cop, she said, “I’m not seeing any blood. How much blood was at the scene?” She was thinking it had to be at least three to four pints to explain what they were seeing here, otherwise it was all internal, which was going to create potentially deadly pressure buildup around the organs and lungs.
The cop had turned away from them, his head and upper body stuck through the front to consult with the driver. Their voices were raised in vigorous debate, and the officer was gesturing at the road. She hoped the officer wasn’t trying to force the driver to go faster in the rain—it didn’t do anyone any good if the ambulance hydroplaned and crashed on the way to the hospital.
The little girl was still reaching for her. “Close…”
Sunny squeezed her wrist. “Shh, sweetie. We’ll help you feel better. Hey! Officer Gilles! How much blood was at the scene?”
The officer, distracted by his conversation with the driver, turned back with an irritated frown. “No blood.” He returned to the front immediately, then got on his radio.
“Hey, dispatch, this is Medic 37—we got a couple black SUVs tailing us…”
Harris looked up, frowning. “The guys who shot the girl?”
The police officer waved them off. “Just keep her alive—she’s a witness to something big.”
Harris exchanged a look with Sunny that essentially said, “Bossy dumbass can’t tell dead when he sees it…” The natives of Alyeska, Sunny had learned, could say more with a look or a facial expression than most people could with a whole hour and a megaphone. He kept working, though, dutifully fitting the girl’s right lung cavity with a large-bore needle to drain fluid.
In all honesty, Sunny didn’t really see the point. The girl was essentially chewed-up meat on the gurney, and the rain must have washed away all her blood. By rights, she should’ve stopped moving ten minutes ago, back when they first got the call.
Still, it wasn’t Sunny’s job to decide if the girl was going to die. It was her job to keep the girl alive as long as possible so some ER doctor could pronounce her D.O.A. and chart it all to show that all the employees of Dena’ina South Regional Hospital had followed proper procedure when some sue-happy parents or human rights group wanted to claim their innocent angel didn’t get the best care because one of the fifty gunshot wounds hadn’t been properly noted or plugged en route.
Harris had already started sealing the torso wounds when the ambulance swerved suddenly, almost causing her fiancé to pull the body off the gurney as he struggled to steady himself.
“Hey, watch it!” he cried. “Just let the driver do his job!”
The cop ignored him. He was putting his hand on his weapon, watching something through the front windshield. Sunny tried not to get distracted by whatever was happening up front, instead finding a tourniquet to cut off blood flow above the shredded arm—not that there was any blood flowing, but she didn’t want the IV fluids flushing out what remained.
Somehow, the little girl was still awake, watching Sunny alertly as she moved.
“She’s gonna crash soon,” Harris said. “Having trouble finding IV sites.” He gave the cop an irritated look as he applied another chest seal. “Scalp, maybe?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it,” Sunny said, finishing the tourniquet and turning to find the IV supplies.
She had just unwrapped another large-bore needle when the little girl’s pretty green eyes met hers and Time itself seemed to slow.
Closer , the child said.
Sunny’s hand fisted on the needle. She moved closer.
Lean down.
Sunny started to lean.
“Hey, she’s not dead yet,” Harris said.
Touch my forehead.
Sunny touched the child’s bullet-ridden forehead.
Almost instantly, a rush of hot energy rammed up her arm. It was like getting laid across a city electric line, and Sunny found herself totally paralyzed, unable to remove her hand. She vaguely knew her gloved fingers had spasmed under the force and her index finger had actually slipped into the girl’s brain , but she couldn’t think over the kilotons of vivid slime-green energy exploding through her mind and body.
“Holy fuck, what the fuck Sunny!”
Sunny dimly realized her body was convulsing, her mind suddenly cast free of the chains of her body like a druggie in the throes of an OD. Things started crawling out of the walls, the world gained an extra dimension, and the hurricane of energy whipping through her was like a pus-green tsunami rushing through her chest and flowing back out through her head as it built a perfectly symmetrical, patterned sphere around her, the design like one of those geometric Spirograph drawings, each line looped and doubled and interlaced in an intricate barrier holding the slimy green color inside.
“Get your hand out of her goddamn brain and get her some fluids!” Harris cried. “She’s going into arrest!”
Release, the voice came again. But now it was louder, clearer, and it wasn’t the girl’s voice. It was something deeper, scarier, a thousand times more potent and terrifying. Let go. The compulsion to do as she was told was so strong that Sunny almost obeyed without thinking before she caught herself, realizing the voice was trying to shove her aside, make way for itself …
No, Sunny thought, pissed at the very idea. Fuck that. Despite the ferocity of her thought, however, having it was like forcing a single wisp of breath out against the screaming currents of a storm that was trying to tear her apart, scatter her, send her away.
Under her hand, the girl’s body was starting to spasm, her pupils dilating as she died.
Release! the voice snapped in rising irritation. Now ! The girl’s eyes were glowing that sickly yellow-green, now, almost like something else was taking their place. She saw a shadow move, something writhing underneath the girl’s skin, trying to shove its way up her arm.
No goddamn it, Sunny snapped, holding on.
As Sunny clung to the rock of her mind, the flood increased, desperate to sweep her away. Sunny felt her fingers tighten as she fought for her life, her fingers actually digging into the girl’s ruined skull, gripping it like an anchor.
Dimly, she heard Harris cry out, “Jesus Christ, Sunny, what the fuck are you doing?!”
You belong to me, slave, the voice said. Release! The thunderous voice was filled with anger, now, and Sunny knew the fact that the speaker was angry at her should have filled her with terror.
Instead, she buckled down and held on through the mental torment, grinding her jaw so hard it hurt. No.
Now! The formidable voice was rising in fury, a thrashing maelstrom around her.
No! With every ounce of stubborn self-control she hand, Sunny clung to the rock of her mind even as she felt the storm chipping it away. Whatever was under the girl’s skin was growing in power, getting stronger, more palpable.
No, she said again. Fuck…you…sphincter-seepage…
Holding onto herself was like trying to levitate the Great Pyramid with her mind.
YOU HAVE NO CHOICE! the voice screamed, a nuclear bomb going off in her head, one laced with fury and panic. I’ll destroy you if you don’t release. The creature’s urgency was overpowering her. Let go!
Whatever it was had a hold of her mind and was squeezing, crushing her to that rock as the rest of her world swam and spun in turbulence around her. And, in the chaos of that moment, Sunny knew that she was about to lose control, that whatever this was would be at the helm of her mind for the rest of her life if she didn’t stop it.
That’s right, release, the voice cooed. Let go…
She knew, deep down, that if she could only pull her hand away, she could end the process before whatever was happening became permanent.
Her right hand still clenching on the girl’s skull, Sunny started to move her left through sheer force of will, gripping the large-bore IV needle in a white-knuckled fist. Fighting for every inch, every tremor of movement, she forced herself to bring the needle up over the edge of the gurney.
I am your master now, the pounding voice insisted, oblivious. Obey me!
She could see whatever it was behind the girl’s dead stare roiling there, a massive vortex of sickly green energy preparing to enter her.
Sunny jammed the needle into the girl’s eye all the way to the hilt, trying to drive it into the thing on the other side.
Whatever it was recoiled. Sunny couldn’t pull her hand away afterwards, as she had hoped, but her action nonetheless made whatever was building behind the girl’s glassy stare hesitate.
That’s not possible. The will required—
Distantly, she heard gunshots, and the side of the ambulance was punctured by the steady pops of machine gun fire.
“Jesus Christ!” Harris cried, jumping away from the gurney, hands up. “Fuck! Fuck!” The police officer was sliding to the floor, groaning, holding his own guts in his body. The driver was screaming something unintelligible…
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 1