Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

Darya placed her hand on the back of his head and squeezed his face into hers.

“I’m sorry I had to kill it,” he said.

She pulled her face away and looked deep into his eyes. “So am I,” she replied. “But I am not sorry that you did.”

“Me either,” Ava added, her voice breathless.

“We should not wait around here,” Darya said. “We should go somewhere.”

“Go where?” Ava asked. “What about Lungkaju?”

“I do not know,” Darya answered. “But I think that we should find somewhere quickly.” Her voice took on a new undertone. “I cannot be sure, but I think that these animals might be hunting in pairs.”

5

The hairs rose on the back of Callum’s neck. He brought the rifle back into his shoulder and scanned around. The mist definitely seemed to be thinning. Rather than a blanket, it had fractured into discrete banks, still frequent enough to impair vision beyond a three- or four-metre radius. It was camouflage enough. Beneath his jacket, Callum could feel his arms break out into sudden gooseflesh. “I think you could be right—”

A shadow leapt from the haze, knocking him down and sending the rifle clattering to the floor. He landed on his back and immediately a second creature was on top of him.

His hands fastened around its throat as it lunged for him. Even with his arms locked, its jaw snapped shut just millimetres from his cheek. Beads of saliva rained onto him, and he could feel its foreclaws digging through his jacket into the flesh of his upper arms.

The frantic screams of Darya and Ava tore into his ears. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that they were pelting the creature with rocks. As one connected with its eye, it turned its head to snarl at them, its body tensing as if to leap in their direction.

With no time to lose, Callum grasped for one of the scree missiles that had fallen beside him, picked it up and swung it with all his force into the side of creature’s head.

“Run!” he shouted to the others, as the chunk of rock split against its target. “Go now! Find Lungkaju!”

With a high-pitched scream, the creature turned its attention back to Callum. The ferocity of its attack seemed to double with its rage. Callum’s arms, which he had locked, his hands clamped around its neck, began to buckle under the weight of its lunges.

One of its hind claws shredded at his boot, before shooting up and pinning itself into his thigh muscle. He screamed out in pain, bracing himself for a strike to the body as the claw uncoupled itself and reared back.

Instead, from beside him, there was a sudden growling, followed by a deep roar. The creature was knocked sideways away from him, and he felt himself dragged clear. He scrambled to his feet.

Fenris was on top of the creature, his mouth clamped just below its jaw, tearing at the exposed neck muscle. The creature was on its back, fighting furiously to right itself but unable to rotate its knees and claw at the dog’s underbelly. Its hind legs could only flail uselessly, yet its foreclaws were still free to burrow at his flanks. Tufts of fur drifted to the moss below and a criss-cross of red striations were beginning to blossom up though Fenris’s coat.

Callum looked around to see Darya sprinting in the direction of the tent. She grabbed the rifle. “We must help him! It is too strong! It will kill him!”

He took the rifle from her. There were no rounds left in the chamber, so he pulled a handful from his pocket, spilling most of them on the floor in haste, but managing to reload. He cocked the weapon and pointed it towards the creature.

“Do not hit Fenris!” she pleaded with him.

Before he could do another thing, shots from a different rifle rang out beside him. The creature’s stomach burst open and it fell limp in Fenris’s jaws.

Next thing, Lungkaju came sprinting past Callum towards it, calling the dog away as he went. Fenris obediently dropped the creature’s neck and backed off, chewing the loose feathers from his mouth. Lungkaju placed the barrel square against the side of the creature’s head as if to dispatch it once and for all. But there was no final shot. Instead he waited. Watched.

“It is gone,” he said, eventually turning from the dead creature. He noticed the wound on Callum’s leg and his face dropped. He began walking over. “My friend, you are injured.”

“Never mind me,” Callum shouted to him. “Are you sure it’s dead? Those things play possum.”

“Fenris!” Darya screamed.

Their eyes moved to where the dog stood panting beside the creature’s body.

The eye had reopened.

In an instant, the dying creature lurched forward and plunged its toe claw deep into the side of the unsuspecting dog’s chest. Fenris jumped with the impact and yelped in pain. Then he stumbled forward, whining, and collapsed onto his front.

The creature’s leg retracted slowly, mechanically, and a lid slid shut across its eye.

A scream of anguish ripped through the air as Lungkaju raised his rifle and fired shot after shot into the creature’s body. It twitched with the impact of each round. Then it lapsed back into stillness, the clicking of the trigger signalling that all rounds were spent.

Lungkaju dropped the weapon and knelt beside Fenris. The others watched in silence as he examined the wound. Fenris had rolled over onto his side. Having licked at the gash in confusion, he was now quiet and barely moving. He stared ahead, only the faint twitching of his muzzle betraying that he was still alive.

Lungkaju pushed a glove over the wound to try and stem the bleeding. But it was no use. The puddle had already swollen out around his knees, staining the moss and draining in-between the rocks. “I cannot save him,” he said, his rage turned to disbelief. “I cannot save him.”

Slowly, he pulled the glove away from the wound. The