Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,71
her pain. Just a few more seconds, Somi thought, and then the pain will be gone.
As the first creature came close, its jaws open wide, heading for her head, she gripped the knife handle tight and yanked the blade from her belt. She ducked down as the beast dove for her. She twisted the knife up and thrust.
The blade hit sternum, slicing skin. Nothing more. But as the creature’s forward momentum carried it over Somi and the still-thrust knife, the blade slipped up as the sternum ended. A sound like leather being cut was followed by a wet splat.
Somi stood, ignoring the fact that she was covered in the creature’s disemboweled internal organs. There was no time to feel disgust. The others were upon her.
She swept her arm in an arc, holding the knife out straight. The blade ripped through throat and windpipe, killing another. In the same motion she swung the knife at a third attacker, intending to shove it through the eye socket and into the brain. But the creature flinched back and twisted, taking the blade in the meat of its thick shoulder.
The creature spun away. Somi tried to retrieve the knife from its shoulder but the bulging muscles and thick fur held on tight. The knife was gone.
A screech filled the chamber, bouncing off the walls as though the thousands of glowing green skulls were screaming all at once. Then a shadow fell. Somi looked up and saw a pair of red-rimmed yellow eyes descending toward her.
Red.
There would be no defense against this one. Even if Somi had the knife, she knew a killer when she saw one.
Red planted her feet on Somi’s chest and pounded her to the stone floor of the chamber. A resonant crunch signified the breaking of several ribs.
With the wind knocked out of her, Somi couldn’t even scream as Red took hold of her arms and yanked. With a sickening wet tear, both arms came away from Somi’s body as though she were a plastic doll in the hands of a weight lifter.
Red leaned down to Somi’s face as blood drained onto the stone floor.
Somi’s vision faded, but she could still smell and taste the creature’s rancid breath. As shock set in she wondered if the creatures would eat her alive. Would they tear off her legs too? Gorge on her guts? The creature leaned in closer, moving its lips, searching for something.
Somi felt her head turn to the side as darkness totally replaced her vision. Hot breath touched her ears. Just before Somi’s heart beat her last, a deep and primal voice spoke. “Big men, ours.”
THIRTY-TWO
AS DAWN CRESTED over the jungle, streaks of orange light snuck through the foliage and shot to the ground like laser beams. One of the beams struck King’s closed eye. He twitched. Both eyes opened and darted back and forth. They were alone. The three of them. Huddled together between two large tree roots, covered with large palm leaves, both for camouflage and for fending off the rain, which had stopped only an hour before.
After backtracking through the dark to Queen and narrowly avoiding being shot by her, the three had taken the weapons, backpack, and flashlights and fled from the VPLA camp without a word spoken about what they’d endured. They walked through the dark and rain for three hours, heading ever up, deeper into the Anna-mite range, where they finally decided to stop and rest. All three fell asleep within minutes, even Sara, whose mixed-up senses usually made sleep under the best conditions a challenge.
King looked to his right and found Queen facing the other way, her sleeping body curled up away from him like an angry lover. From this perspective she was the same Queen he’d grown to love like his now-dead sister . . . but he knew she’d changed. Become a darker version of her former self. He had yet to see the brand on her forehead, but he knew it was there. And he would have to be careful of how he reacted to it. Had this happened to his actual sister, King might have felt a deep sadness. It was an appropriate response to such a horrible act. But this was Queen. Compassion wouldn’t go over well and might earn him a swift kick in the groin. He made a mental note to not even glance at it when she finally let him see. Better to ignore its existence. Treat her the same.