The Rottweiler kept hitting the door, again and again, snarling and biting at the barrier. Under his assault, the safety glass finally succumbed, and a section of it tore outward like cloth. The dog immediately found the hole with his nose and started biting and ripping at the glass with his teeth.
Sunny left a couple bottles in the parking lot and ran. She made it to the Chevy and jumped inside, throwing the bottles haphazardly into the cab and thrusting her key into the ignition before she had the door shut behind her. The truck roared to life and she immediately put it in gear. She chanced a glance at the door to the veterinary as she was hitting the gas.
The broken glass of the front door was covered in blood. The dog was on his hind legs, trying to climb through the opening while the two veterinary employees tried to stop him.
Seeing that, Sunny peeled out of the parking lot and drove twenty minutes down three different roads at twice the speed limit before she managed to get her own terror under control.
A stuck-up tentacle monster she could handle. Man’s Best Friend, who unfailingly tried to eviscerate her on sight, she couldn’t.
Her heart still hammering twenty minutes later, Sunny decided to chill out with some food at a local cafe.
Unfortunately, the lady at the front counter recognized her. “Hey!” she cried, growing confrontational. “Aren’t you that gal they’re looking for?”
Sunny blinked. “Huh?”
“Yeah!” The woman gestured to the TV on the wall. “You are! From that massacre in Willow!”
Sure enough, when Sunny looked up at the television the establishment provided to patrons, her face was on the morning news, a mugshot from her driver’s license alongside a live scene from above as police cars and ambulances surrounded her old cul-de-sac.
The scene cut to an image of Janelle in her bathrobe, curlers in, talking to a reporter. She flung a cigarette-clutching hand back at the scene behind her, then took a puff. “Was like this when I got home. Just so quiet, I knew something was up.”
But you didn’t check it out until ambulances started to line up on the street, Sunny thought, lips tightening. With her heavy metal playing ninety percent of the time she was home, Janelle was oblivious to everything but an airhorn.
Then Janelle went on, “Always knew something was up with that gal in 1-A. She was real quiet, always scratchin’ at her window like a cat needing to get out. Nobody ever saw her come or go…knew she was up to no good.”
Sunny bristled.
“You are , aren’t you?” the girl at the counter cried. She’d been watching Sunny’s reaction the whole time.
But Sunny wasn’t paying attention because the scene had switched to Tommy. He was wearing a leather jacket and a ball cap. So it hadn’t been Tommy’s foot, after all… She didn’t know whether to be relieved or saddened by that.
Tommy was puffed up, performing for the camera. “Yeah, my girlfriend Marie called me and said to come quick—there was this gal called Sunny Day out here killing everyone.”
Sunny felt her heart give a startled hammer. Tommy was telling people he saw her do it? He couldn’t even remember her face, let alone giving her a jump… It was probably the truck, she realized. He was probably trying to punish her for the truck…
“Yeah, she had this chainsaw and she was going from door to door,” Tommy said. “Real-life chainsaw massacre. I got here and I tried to stop her, but she almost got me, too.” He showed the camera a bloody bandage that had been applied over his chest.
That was not cool, Tommy. Not freakin’ cool.
And then she noticed the smirk on Tommy’s face, the way he was enjoying himself. Definitely the truck, then. Even after knowing him for almost two years, Sunny hadn’t realized that weasely little druggie was so vindictive.
Then she froze, frowning. Was Tommy missing a tattoo on his neck? She could’ve sworn he had a chained pitbull inked on his neck…
“I’m calling the police,” the fast food clerk said. She picked up the phone.
“They’re already here,” Sunny said, gesturing behind the girl.
The girl never took her attention off Sunny, just narrowed her eyes and kept dialing.
Sunny made a face and walked out.
The girl actually followed her. “Police! Someone call the police! It’s the gal from the Willow Massacre!”
Several patrons looked up from their meals. Immediately upon seeing Sunny, one of them reached for her phone. Knowing this wasn’t going to go well with so many witnesses, Sunny ditched at a run, got in the Chevy, and fled.
The next restaurant in Point MacKenzie she stopped at, Cook Inlet Pub, was much more amenable to serving her. Then again, Tommy’s sunglasses and hillbilly hat probably helped. The waitress let Sunny sit in a corner booth while she waited for her burger and fries. Thinking of how many burgers she’d been eating of late, she remembered the last time her mother had thrown a fit regarding her eating habits over a long-distance call from Canada.
“Sunny Ginger Day, you can’t just eat what you want all the time—your body needs nutrition.”
“Burgers are nutrition, Mom,” an irritated seventeen-year-old Sunny had said, right before she hung up.
And, because her mother had been in Canada, she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Later, Daphne told her that she’d made her mother cry, and Sunny had felt horrible. She’d even made an effort to eat stuff other than burgers for a while, but it didn’t last long.
As Sunny ate lunch, she couldn’t help worry about the dog. It was almost as if something possessed them when she got too close, and they had absolutely no care for their own safety once that switch flipped. She remembered the blood, the Rottweiler scrambling through the broken glass. Part of the reason why she’d chosen the apartment in Willow was that the landlord who owned the cul-de-sac had absolutely forbidden pets, even snakes and iguanas.
Then Sunny thought about whether or not a snake would attack her on sight and quickly ended that chain of speculation.
It was around four o’clock by the time Sunny had fed herself and overcome enough of the Rottweiler-induced jitters to enact her plan. Putting the last half of her fries in a to-go box for later, Sunny climbed back into Tommy’s truck and headed south to the North Dome. On the drive to Dortez’s apartment, Sunny made a brief call to New Republic to ascertain that Dortez was still teaching for that day.
“New Republic High,” a woman who sounded like she was usually more chipper said.
“Hi,” she told the secretary, “I’m just wondering if AP Calculus is being taught today.”
“All classes are proceeding as usual,” the woman said, her tone almost stilted.
Sunny had the twitch of instinct to grill the woman on why she sounded like she just lost her cat, but settled for, “Dortez’s class is in session?”
“Yes , his classes are still in session. We aren’t answering any more questions from reporters.” The woman hung up.
Sunny frowned. Reporters? After pulling in to the parking garage nearest Dortez’s apartment on 8th , she spent a few minutes hydrating Botox powder and putting it into syringes. Then, because her face was now apparently more memorable than she would have liked, she took Tommy’s sunglasses from where he’d tucked them under the visor and put them on, then pulled her hair out of its pony tail and put on Tommy’s ancient redneck hat.
Tugging her backpack full of chemicals over a shoulder, she got out of the Chevy, went up to the front entrance, and walked past the doorman as if she owned the place. She bypassed the front desk and, using the master key, went straight up the elevator to apartment 5043.
When she got close to the door, she saw a stack of flowers and cards at the entry, and a lump of dread started to unfurl in the pit of her stomach. Inside the room, she saw light and heard crying.
Oh no, Sunny thought, swallowing hard. No, no, no…
A well-wisher stepped past her and placed another bundle of flowers at the door by Sunny’s feet. Sunny stopped the woman, whom
she remembered as a science teacher.
“What happened?” Sunny asked.
“Poor girl killed herself three nights ago,” the woman said. “Her dad’s shotgun.”
Sunny was flabbergasted. She had seen Arielle three nights ago. The idea that the girl had killed herself right after she departed left Sunny devastated.
I could have done more, she realized.
The woman made a commiserating face. “Seems like it’s always the best ones who go before their time.”
“What about that math teacher?” Sunny demanded. “Dortez? He’s driving them to commit suicide.”
“He quit this morning,” the woman said. “Couldn’t stand the guilt, he said. Now nobody can get hold of him.”
Sunny froze. Dortez broke his pattern, which meant… She glanced at the door to room 5043. Would he even be back? Did he know she had found his lair?
Chances were he wouldn’t return. Dortez was, after all, a thinking beast. If he’d been able to track her down via Bertha, it would only be a matter of time before he got her cell phone history and used it to pinpoint where she had been over the last week.
Or where she was now, for that matter.
Still, on the off-chance he was as stupid as he looked, she had to try. Sunny waited for the portly woman to wander back down the hall, then slid the receptionist’s key into the lock and gingerly pushed. The door swung inward to reveal a cool, humid jungle. Sunny stepped inside quickly, pulling the door shut behind her. She readied her Botox syringe and looked around.
She heard a strange grinding sound, like a dog gnawing on a bone. She gingerly lowered her backpack to the ground and got her thumb on the syringe plunger as she moved deeper into the cave.
The sound stopped before she got close enough to see what was making it. She heard, however, the splash of water.
Something’s home , she thought, on a dual wave of relief and anxiety. Finally, one way or another, she was going to be able to end this thing. She stepped around the cool, damp foliage and gingerly stepped into the back room containing the creature’s den.
There was a girl chained in the pool.
The naked girl looked to be a teenager and was shivering, her skin damp and her dark hair wet. Her skin was pale, almost blue. Her face was masked by a burlap bag ziptied to her neck. Both of her hands were chained behind her back, and a metal collar around her neck was keeping her secured by carabiner clips to the center of the pool.
Oh shit, Sunny thought, her heart taking a jagged leap in her chest. Shit, shit. She slipped down into the water and was shocked by the cold.
It’s like fucking ice water, she thought, stunned the girl was even still alive, much less standing. She wondered how long she had been here, cursing herself for not checking back sooner. She sloshed forward to reach the girl. The girl whimpered and turned as she approached, though the bag over her head kept her from seeing Sunny.
“It’s okay,” Sunny assured her as she reached forward to unclip the girl’s collar from the three chains holding her in place. “I’m here to help
The girl whimpered. Behind the bag, she said, “I’m so hungry.”
After spending however long it had been standing in ice-cold water, shivering, Sunny could imagine. “I’ll get you some food,” Sunny assured her as she gently unclipped the other two chains. “Lots of food, don’t worry.” She reached for the mechanism holding the girl’s wrists together. “We’ll get you out of here, get you warmed up…”
As Sunny freed her, the girl’s body was wracked with a full-body shiver. “Thank you,” she whimpered. “I thought I was going to starve in here.”
“You’re not. I’m gonna get you somewhere safe, then find that fucker and—” Sunny pulled the bag from the girl’s head. Her heart stuttered. The girl was dead.
It was Arielle Westerly. She had a gunshot wound through her skull, a massive open hole through one eye socket showing the plant life behind her. Ridiculously, Sunny recognized it as a shotgun blast, because she knew from her time in the back of an ambulance that other guns didn’t make holes that big.
Then that sound came again, closer this time. The grating, bone-on-bone sound that had given her shivers at the entrance, and it sounded like it was right on top of her…
She saw something squirm inside Arielle’s head. Inside the hole, something was moving. Something small and gray, with tentacles. And, now that Sunny was listening, she could hear that the weird grinding-chewing sounds weren’t coming from somewhere else in the room, as she had thought, but from inside the girl herself.
Sunny stumbled backwards into the pool as the girl, whose motions were stiff and jerky, turned to face her. “You said you had food?” The girl’s blue-lipped mouth was moving, but the words were coming from inside the hole in her head.
The corpse took a step forward, following Sunny through the water. A cold, clammy hand reached out and touched Sunny’s leg. The grinding sound inside the girl’s body continued. A tentacle was pushing out of the girl’s eye socket, making the intact eyeball bulge and move. “I’m so hungry, Papa…”
Sunny lunged from the pool and splashed up onto the stone edge, sloshing ice water onto the plants. They rippled from the impact, dripping glowing purple liquid back onto the tiles. The corpse started to follow her through the glowing purple liquid, motions jerky and frantic. “Please feed me, Daddy…”
Sunny kicked at the creature, knocking it back into the water. She saw the tentacles slide around again as water flooded the hole in the girl’s head.
Then, like something out of a nightmare, the corpse crawled back out of the pool, reaching for her. Sunny stabbed it with the Botox, but it just kept coming, almost as if she had tried to paralyze a dead frog that someone else was electrocuting.
“I smell you,” the thing was saying from Arielle’s empty cranium. It sounded excited. “Daddy brought me another treat!”
“Back off!” Sunny kept backing up through the plant life, and the corpse kept crawling towards her, faster now, covering her naked body with the glowing purple plant emanations. Sunny had to move so fast to avoid Arielle’s corpse that her legs caught in the plants and, before she could catch herself, she went over backwards. In a flash, the creature crawled up on top of her, its little gray tentacles sticking out of the hole where Arielle’s eye should have been, tiny suckers gripping Sunny’s face, the little spikes of its tentacles pricking her cheeks as the tiny black mouth appeared in the gaping wound, pulsing, hungry…
“Ohhh you taste good ,” it chittered. “The last one was so boring …”
It was all Sunny could do to keep the corpse at bay with her left hand as she sought a weapon with her right. Her fingers found a stone planter even as the suckers started to sting and rip at her flesh, pulling her closer to the dead woman…
Off balance and with only her right hand, Sunny awkwardly shoved the stone planter at the dead woman’s head, crushing what was left of Arielle’s skull and sending the corpse reeling to one side. Sunny righted herself, picked up the planter with both hands, and raised it over her head to bring it down on the creature with full force.
There was a shriek and the plants around them suddenly flashed with the luminescence of a violet sun, making Sunny cry out and shield her eyes against the glare. As she was holding a hand up to protect herself, the area around Arielle’s head became a momentary stab of void-black nothingness, and the baby monster disappeared.
A moment later, still stretched across Sunny’s lower body, Arielle’s corpse went limp atop her. In the pool, the blackness shimmered again, and Sunny saw a two-foot shadow with too many legs appear under the water, moving like a jellyfish. The purple light from the plants, which had been searing to the eye, began to dwindle back to the normal spectrum.
“Fuck this,” Sunny babbled, crawling out from under the cold, clammy corpse. In the pool, the monster was circling like a trapped shark. It had teleported . From the corpse to the tank, in less than a heartbeat… “Fuck this so hard…” She had
made it all the way back to the door, her hand on the latch to get outside, before she stopped.
No.
No, fuck that .
Whatever ‘that’ was, she knew for a fact it was better off dead.
From the other room, she heard splashes as something moved in the pool. Sunny released the latch, then reached into her backpack and grabbed the bottles of copper solution and Dimethyl Sulfoxide.
Here, baby monster…
She carried them—and a heavy dose of Botox—back into the room with the tank. The creature immediately retreated to the other side of the pool, a dark feathery shape under the surface. As she kept an eye on the monster, she started emptying the chemicals into the water.
The monster must have seen her do it, because it lunged out of the water and hit her in the side like a sledgehammer, latching its arms around her body, suction-cups grasping, and pinning her right arm to her torso. The two tentacles with barbs began tearing at her chest and pelvis, ripping the clothes and skin. Then that beakish black mouth started to bite…
Even as she felt her own skin rending under its assault, Sunny slammed the creature into a wall, trying to smash its leathery head against her elbow.
It was like trying to make a dent in a stress-relief squishy-ball. The creature’s beak started to grind against the bone of her arm, causing that same gnawing sound she had heard earlier…
As the monster was tearing at her elbow, Sunny ran back to her backpack at the door and grabbed her last syringe of Botox from within. Awkwardly with her left hand, Sunny jammed the syringe of Botox into its octopus-like head. Before she could switch her grip and depress the plunger, however, the foliage of the place flashed luminescent purple again and the monster flashed black before it disappeared. Back in the pool in the other room, something splashed. The syringe dropped to the ground at her feet, unused.
It’s back in the pool.
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 21