The Lab stopped in its tracks, whining, as she walked her bike through the sand along the cylinder up to an arched opening about three times her height and several body-lengths long. Her erstwhile doggie-friend loped away, glancing back over its shoulder a couple of times before disappearing behind the Orchard Hardware store. Okay, Laurie thought, goosebumps rising on her forearms. Not like dogs had good instincts about danger or anything.
But if a monster or alien was going to spring out at her, it was already too late.
The sunlight didn't penetrate far into the "submarine," but with her first steps inside, a couple of things stood out. First, a definite barnyard smell. Second, the floor held several inches of sand or sandy dirt. There were many footprints – a few of them quite large, none of them human – converging on the entrance. Her athletic shoes left deep prints of their own. In the meager sunlight, she discerned outlines of what appeared to be plants and bushes and square objects that might've been for storage or housing.
Laurie couldn't make sense of it, except the obvious: this was a chamber designed to hold animals. Was this where the "punk elves" had come from?
Backing out, Laurie pedaled hard back to town. A dog – she assumed the Lab – was barking fiercely. The yapping stopped in mid-bark. Laurie slowed her peddling. The sound seemed to have been coming from the far side of the hardware store. Laurie rolled onto the sidewalk in front of the store, coasting cautiously past the storefront toward the space between it and the adjacent First Glenwald Bank. A slurpy, gurgling growl that made her think of feeding cats issued from that general area. Laurie leaned her bike against the front wall and peeked out around the corner into the grassy area between the buildings, expecting to find the Lab feeding on something.
Instead, something was feeding on the Lab. At first, she thought it was a bear. The size was about right, though the body seemed too long, and the strands of golden and darker brown fur made her think more of a wolverine. Then she thought wolf, because of the longer head-shape and perky ears. Then she noticed the leathery flaps folded into its sides. Wings?
The feeding creature raised its bloody snout from a gaping wound in the Lab's side and gazed at her. Large, shimmering orange-gold eyes studied her without apparent surprise or alarm. Laurie thought she saw awareness in its eyes unlike she'd ever seen in any animal's eyes before. A long, green tongue slithered out, lapping up a patch of flesh atop its thick muzzle.
Laurie backed behind the wall. The hardware store's entrance was less than twenty feet away. She sprinted for the door, hearing a ruffling motion behind her. It only occurred to her as she grabbed the handle that it might be locked, but it swung freely and she ducked inside.
The wolf-thing landed on the roof of a car facing the entrance. Through the front window, she watched its large, bat-like wings flare out and then fold in as it dropped down. The car's roof creaked, bending downward.
It perched on the car, watching her, its thick muzzle parted, revealing rows of long, pointy teeth inside. Its head was bigger than a wolf's, more bear-sized. Its upper body, swathed in golden-brown fur shot through with white and cinnamon streaks, was broad and appeared densely muscled – more gorilla than bear-shaped, Laurie thought. Two thick, furry arms slipped out from under the wings and rested on its coiled thighs. The arms ended in large, fur-covered paws. More the shape of hands, she thought, than paws – the fingers were gorilla-like, too, she thought. Shiny raven-black claws slid out, cat-like, from its fingers. It raised one claw and flicked a piece of yellow Lab fur from its chest. The claws slipped back into its hands. She had the weirdest impression that it was amused, that it was toying with her.
Coming to her senses, Laurie turned the door lock firmly into place. The creature continued to study her, making no move to leave its perch on the car.
Laurie backed away, keeping her motions calm and purposeful, not wanting to show fear. In a few minutes it, whatever it was, would need to be afraid of her. Orchard Hardware had a full gun shop at the rear of the store.
It got darker and darker as she retreated from the front windows. In the back, the rifles and shotguns hung like shadowy creatures on the wall, and the handguns looked like rodents in their darkened glass cages. As she adjusted to the dim light, Laurie was startled to see a number of handguns and two rifles set out on the glass counter. Of course, they could've been set out for a customer before whatever happened had happened, but remembering the wounds on the "punk elves" made her think otherwise. Whoever shot them had probably got their guns here.
One of the weapons on the counter was a Colt AR-15 platform, which happened to be the exact weapon she'd trained on with her father. One of the handguns was a Glock Gen 4. 35 – .40 caliber – which she'd shot a few times with her dad. Her dad was a freak about handguns – always selling or buying and testing them – and right now she was extremely grateful for their occasional practice sessions together. A pistol belt was hanging on the wall behind her. A very large knife was already on the belt. Feeling a connection with whoever had selected these weapons – a trust in their judgment – she strapped on the belt with the big knife and loaded the Glock and Colt magazines and snapped them into place.
Back at the entrance, the wolf-creature was gone. If not for the dent in the car's roof, Laurie would've been half-tempted to dismiss the whole surrealistic encounter. She turned the lock open and pushed the door handle.
Several figures flitted past out on the street. Laurie didn't have a clear view of them around the cars – just a glimpse of what appeared to be young girls wearing some form of butterfly costume, running at top speed. One problem: they were moving too fast. Another problem was that the "girl's" wings appeared to be rapidly beating. Costumes didn't do that. Also, their faces and hair weren't quite right. Wait, were they the dead punk elves with the gun wounds –
Smack!
Laurie jumped back from the window, where one of the subjects of her speculation had flattened her or its body against the glass. The thing was smaller than she was, covered in soft, ivory-yellow down-like fur, yellow-white strands or feathers protruding from her head. Its face was narrow...vulpine, was the word that came to mind. If you merged a fox's head with a human, she thought, you might get something like this. Or maybe flattened a young girl's face into a triangle. Shiny, unblinking red and black compound insect-like eyes, head cocking in quick, jerky motions. Triangular, sharkish teeth in its open mouth. Smallish, bony arms and fingers ending in yellow claws spattered with bluish spots. Transparent wings spread wide against the window – a lattice-work of red, purple, and green veins/blood vessels glowing in the sunlight. The living version of the bodies she'd seen by the eaten girls on sidewalk. Laurie was mesmerized. She was sure she'd never seen a creature so bizarre and beautiful and creepy. Not even the flying wolf.
Laurie snapped out of her reverie when the creature started to pull on the door. She pulled back hard, twisting the lock back into place. The creature tapped the glass with its claws. Laurie wasn't sure if it was greeting her or probing the window for weakness. She raised her AR.
The creature buzzed away.
Laurie waited several long seconds before unlocking and pushing the door open just enough to peer out on the street and sidewalks in both directions. She edged out into the open.
A whoosh of air overhead caused Laurie to look up in time to see the winged-wolf swishing past twenty or thirty feet over the hardware building. She raised her AR and it dived out of sight behind the nearby bank.
After a few breaths, Laurie slowly lowered her rifle. The wolf-thing was obviously a dangerous predator, but despite killing a dog it hadn't shown more toward her than curiosity. No guarantee that its curiosity might not turn deadly at any moment, but she had a strong feeling that the winged wolf didn't see her as prey. But while the winged elfin creatures hadn't attacked her yet, she was proceeding on the assumption that they had killed the two girls.
Still, she decided that she wouldn't start blasting the animals unless they behaved aggress
ively toward her. It obviously wasn't their choice to be dropped here. They weren't the ones who knocked out the power and poisoned the air with something that evidently only killed human beings. But who did drop them here and why?
Crack! Crack! Laurie jerked her head toward what sounded like a distant gunfire. Was that what she'd heard? It wasn't much louder than a thin branch snapping. She guessed it had come from the north, maybe a mile or two away if it really had been gunshots.
Gazing north, Laurie thought she spotted movement in the second-floor window of the hospital. Not the source of the gunfire, obviously. A trick of the light? She stared at the window. It appeared to be partly open.
A shadow shifted across the glass – something too far back from the window to see. Laurie told herself not to get excited. For all she knew, it could just be something flapping in the breeze within the room. But if something was moving in there...well, assuming none of these animals could open doors – maybe not a safe assumption, she thought – it was a person, right? Or was that wishful thinking?
Laurie walked her bike back to the medical center. She rolled her bike with her left hand, the AR in her right, and parked out front. Inside, she called out, "Anyone alive in here?"
After a few seconds of silence, she hiked up to the second floor and walked slowly down the hallway peering into the rooms facing the front parking lot. Every room was filled with bodies, some on beds, and some – mostly nurses – flopped on the floor. The fourth room down the hall was her quarry. She eased into the open door, rifle leveled, feeling like a cop in an action movie.
Nothing jumped out at her as the source of the moving shadow. Five hospital beds, five bodies. But then she noticed a hump in a hospital blanket over a young woman – a young woman whose long, dark hair splayed over the pillow from her bluish-white face. Dried blood ringed a teacup-size hole in her forehead. Laurie had seen her around town and in church with a man she assumed was her husband, but couldn't remember her name.
Laurie also had no name for the hump in the blanket covering her, which was now moving sideways and up and down – just a few inches, like something or someone shifting their weight to find a more comfortable position. The movements were accompanied by soft slurping sounds.
Fear and anger bloomed in near-equal measures as Laurie advanced, teeth clenched, toward the bed. Steadying the AR in one hand, she grabbed one corner of its sheet and yanked it off.
A thing was on the young woman's chest that appeared to be a small, shriveled old lady with mottled skin and strings of grey hair slicked back over a mostly bald head. An old, shriveled crone with a long nose buried in the dead woman's abdomen. It raised its head with a startled snuffle, exposing what looked like a long, stretched mouth ending in sucker-shaped lips smeared with blood and viscera. It eyes were small, black coals peering at her from a classic misshapen goblin's face.
Laurie stumbled back from the bed, leveling her rifle. The creature sprang from the bed through the half-open window. A fifteen-foot leap that was so fast that she never had a chance to even start tracking it before it plunged into the branches of a nearby tree. Laurie ran to the window in time to see it drop to the ground and scamper out of sight.
What the heck...? Laurie shook her head with disgust and exasperation. She could just as well ask what the heck had happened since yesterday afternoon. She turned from the window to the occupant of the bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. With extreme reluctance, Laurie moved closer to view a circular wound on the young woman's head. A ribbon of sunlight partly illuminated a hole, which she guessed had been caused by the creature's sucker-shaped lips. Stooping closer, she traced the shred of light downward into a cavernous darkness.
The woman's brain was gone.
Laurie straightened up with a jolt, staggering backward. The thing had eaten her brain, along with part of her body! A momentary rage made her regret not blowing the creatures' own brains out when she'd had the chance. Then her anger retreated. The old-lady creature probably hadn't killed her but was only feeding on her body. Sucking up her brain. Laurie's stomach clenched. She lowered herself on the edge of another hospital bed and took a moment to steady her breathing.
Outside the hospital, Laurie didn't encounter any more outlandish creatures on her way back through town. But leaving town, she soon spotted a winged creature soaring from tree to tree a half-mile or so off the road that she was fairly sure was the winged-wolf from town or one of its kind. Was it following her? So far, it had been keeping its distance, as if it knew the power of her weapons.
Then something flying much higher up caught her attention. She slowed her pedaling, peering upward, shading her eyes. Another winged creature, also far too large to be native, was cruising many hundreds if not thousands of feet above the winged-wolf. It had really large wings – larger in proportion to the body than the wolf-creature, she was pretty sure. She had the sense it was shadowing the lower-flying wolf-creature.
The higher-flying creature abruptly folded its wings and dived – straight down at the winged-wolf, Laurie thought. She slowed to a stop and got off her bike. She'd seen hawks dive like that occasionally, hitting a pheasant or other bird mid-air. This thing was descending a lot faster. More fighter jet speed, she thought. And as it descended, its shape grew increasingly different-looking from the thing it was attacking.
"Hey!" Laurie shouted, waving her arms. "Hey – it's above you!"
She jabbed a finger at the attacking creature. She had no idea why she'd decided to warn the wolf-thing, but it seemed to hear her and understand, glancing upward and then banking sharply toward the nearest tree as the attacker converged on it. It was going to be close. Laurie held her breath even though she had no stake in the outcome. For all she knew, the attacker was the "good guy." The wolf-creature had killed a perfectly nice dog, after all.
The winged-wolf plunged into the big oak barely a body's length ahead of its pursuer. Branches and limbs rattled and shook off leaves. The winged-wolf scuttled deep into the foliage. Its attacker – the first word that entered Laurie's mind was mini-dragon – did not appear nearly at home in the tree, having to flap its wings hard to stay aloft as the limb it had landed on snapped under its weight. While the dragon-creature frantically flapped its wings seeking balance on another perch, the wolf-creature broke off a thick branch and was stripping away its leaves and smaller branches.
The mini-dragon sprang from the tree and circled away. Then its head turned toward Laurie. The body followed a moment later as if noticing her for the first time and wanting to face her squarely. It began flying toward her at the approximate speed of a low-flying crop duster.
Oh, shit. Laurie started grappling with the strap holding her AR over her right shoulder. But when she unslung the rifle and took aim, the dragon veered behind some trees and plunked down on a farmhouse set back from the road, its claws squealing on the metal roof. Another vigorous flap of the wings carried it around a peak on the second floor, where only its head and shoulders were exposed as it peered at her from maybe one hundred yards away. Laurie placed the AR's sights a fraction above its head. She had a shot. Should she take it?
The creature eased back so only one eye and part of its heavy muzzle were visible. Laurie lowered the rifle. Either both the dragon and the winged-wolf understood the idea of weapons or they specifically recognized this kind of gun. Not so hard to believe when plenty of birds were spooked by a pointed rifle. And these things seemed more intelligent than any bird she'd ever seen.
The wolf-creature launched out of its tree, carrying a long, spear-shaped branch in one hand. It coasted along maybe twenty feet up at about the leisurely speed of a hand-thrown glider, heading toward another large tree at the near edge of the farm about halfway between Laurie and the mini-dragon. It landed on an outer limb, laying the spear-branch across its thighs, facing the dragon, making grooming motions on its wings with its clawed fingers. The dragon started toward it, but with a wary glance at Laurie, pulled back to cover. The wolf emitted a low
yodeling that half-sounded like a laugh. The dragon growled-hissed but stayed where it was. Laurie had the weird feeling of having become a piece in a chess game between the two creatures.
The winged-wolf continued preening and grooming as if it hadn't a care in the world. The dragon made what Laurie thought were frustrated wheezing sounds and scrabbled off the far side of the farmhouse. She glimpsed it flying between two barns and again behind the utility building, perhaps circling in toward the wolf. The wolf's casual posture transformed in an instant to coiled readiness as it hoisted the spear and shuffled around the tree toward the anticipated dragon's direction of attack.
But the dragon didn't appear on schedule. Seconds slowly built into a full minute. And then another. The winged-wolf lowered its spear, its body relaxing a few notches as it performed a scan of the barnyard and nearby trees. Perhaps the dragon had flown away?
A fast-moving shadow and a whistling in the air made Laurie look up. Something – not the dragon - was falling on her. She leaped to one side instinctively, dropping into a roll, her rifle slipping out of her hands. Thunk-thunk-thunk! Hard objects smacked her fallen bike and the soft ground where she'd been. A cluster of farm implements– tilling blades, metal pipes, and large lag screws – stuck in the ground around her bike. Laurie peered upward, shading her eyes. High in the air – high enough so that it appeared the size of a mouse – the dragon was angling down toward the tree where the wolf-creature still perched, showing no indication it knew about the airborne threat.
The thing tried to kill me?! Laurie scrambled to her feet, snatching up her rifle, anger and disbelief vying with an aftershock of fear – she might be lying in body parts right now if she hadn't seen the shadow! – charging her muscles. She drew a bead on the swiftly flying creature, which had dropped a few hundred yards since passing overhead.
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