Apocalyptic pirates 2, p.15
Apocalyptic Pirates 2, page 15
Then I pointed out the front door at the dragon that was now prowling back and forth on the other side of the vehicle.
Staring right at us.
Chapter 10
The dragon wasn’t as incredibly large as some of the ones we’d seen. But its dark green head could nearly fit through the gap between the car and the window, and it slid its narrow face into the hole and flared its nostrils as it sniffed at us.
Its bright red eyes bored into mine, and my heart pounded in my chest at the sight of the monstrous creature’s sharp, shiny teeth that spilled over the side of its mouth and jutted out in all directions.
It was butt fucking ugly, but it meant business.
And suddenly, I realized that it wasn’t one of the dragons we’d seen when we first entered town. It wasn’t even one of the two we’d seen when we were at the hardware store.
This was a completely different dragon, and it had still somehow managed to find us.
Had it heard the glass break? And if so, from how far away?
Or maybe it smelled us…
I looked down at the small scratches on my arms and hands from where I’d busted out the window. I was bleeding, but barely.
Was that minute amount of blood enough for this gigantic lizard to sniff us out?
Son of a bitch.
These were apex predators we were looking at. But being top of the food chain didn’t come just from being big. These bastards probably had incredibly sharp senses. There was no telling how far away this dragon had been when it either smelled or heard us, or both. It definitely wasn’t in the vicinity before we entered the building, at least not that I saw.
Where had this bastard been hiding?
The idea that it was stalking us came to mind, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as I subconsciously stepped in front of Ally.
Suddenly, the dragon’s bright red eyes narrowed on me, and it let out a loud screech that filled the room as it thrust its head as far into the window as it possibly could.
The car shook as the dragon tried to weasel its way through the hole, and I nearly pissed myself as I watched its giant mouth open to reveal row after row of snaggly, yellowed teeth.
“Holy shit,” Ally squealed, and I could hear the panic in her voice as she squeezed my forearm like she was giving birth. “What are we going to do? Our car is out there.”
“There’s no way we can get to our car without going through that winged asshole,” I said through gritted teeth. “We need to find another way out.”
“The back,” Ally said as her nails dug into my arm. “We could go out the back. I know it was locked from the outside, but I bet we can get out from inside.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, but then a thought crossed my mind. “Shit, if we leave without the car, we’ll have to walk back to the marina.”
Walking back to the marina meant we would be out in the open and exposed to any other winged fucks that might be flying around the area looking for a quick snack. It wasn’t ideal by any means, but it looked like the only option we had at the moment.
“How far is it?” the redhead asked quickly.
“I think it’s about two miles,” I said without taking an eye off of the monstrous reptile. “So probably just under an hour of walking as long as the terrain is decent.”
“We could walk along the road, couldn’t we?” she pushed.
“I don’t think so.” I pursed my lips and shook my head. “That would put us out in the open, and the last thing we want is for a couple of dragons to hop over us and decide we’d make a good dinner. At least the forest would provide some coverage.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “It’s one thing to be in a vehicle. But that’s a pretty long walk, too. Could we try and kill the dragon? We’ve got guns.”
“I know.” I nodded. “I was considering that, too. It would be loud, but it might be worth it at this point. If we can just get to the car, we can get the hell out of this town.”
Metal scraped as the car was pushed against the building even harder. The dragon snapped its powerful jaws, and then it managed to get its front two legs over the side of the vehicle, which meant we probably had less than a minute before it was all the way in here.
“I think that’s our best–” Ally started, but just then the sound of multiple screams flooded the building, and we both jolted in surprise at the sound.
The dragon screeched and disappeared, and I quickly ran over to the counter and climbed up so I could see just what in the Sam Hill was going on.
Ally was next to me in an instant, and the two of us stared wide-eyed at the strange scene outside the building.
Out of nowhere, the townsfolk had swarmed the dragon, and when it tried to fly away, someone threw a sheet with rocks tied to the corners over its wings. These crazy bastards had literally made themselves a net out of some rocks and a sheet.
But the craziest part was that it fucking worked.
The dragon’s wings got caught in the sheet, and it barely got two inches off the car before it stumbled and fell to the ground.
In the blink of an eye, the people were crowded around the giant reptile with whatever weapons they’d managed to find in their sheds. A couple of people had axes, someone had a shovel, and three people had pitchforks. It was like a scene out of a B-class Sci-Fi movie, only somehow, the people here were winning.
The dragon screeched and snapped at them, but they were ruthless in their attacks, and even without firepower, they were doing a damn good job of injuring the monstrous reptile.
Someone slashed the dragon’s side, and blood gushed out of the wound and onto the ground. Another person stabbed its nose with the pitchfork, which made it scream in pain and rear its head back.
Ally and I stood in a trance and watched it all happen. Our plan of trying to take it out with our guns was out the window. And even though part of me wanted to jump in and help kill the dragon, the fact that these people were crazy enough to take on a ginormous reptile with nothing more than baseball bats and axes told me that I couldn’t trust them. They had some severe mob mentality going on, and I wasn’t about to give them an opportunity to come for me, especially since Ally and I had guns they didn’t. We might have more firepower, but they outnumbered us, and they knew this town a lot better than we did. They could easily decide they wanted our guns, and then it would be an all-out brawl that I simply didn’t have time for.
All of a sudden, some asshole screamed “Leroy Jenkins,” and came out of nowhere with a flamethrower they’d made using a metal bracket with a Zippo mounted on a Super Soaker. The water gun must have been filled with lighter fluid or gasoline, because as soon as it hit the flame from the Zippo, it resulted in a huge flame that shot out at least six feet in front of him.
The dragon reared back as the man rushed toward it, and I heard several people groan in response before someone yelled, “God damnit, Jacob, I told you to keep that thing outta this!”.
“Alriiiiight,” I said, and I grabbed Ally’s hand and pulled her toward the back of the store. “That’s our cue to go.”
“Right.” She nodded fervently, and the two of us pulled our suitcases behind us as we ran to find the back exit.
It only took a minute for us to find the fire exit, and as soon as we did, I poked my head out and looked around. There were two guys near the side of the building who were staring toward the marina, and I figured they were some kind of lookout for the townsfolk, but neither of them were armed, so as long as we could outrun them, we’d be fine.
Of course, we had our guns if we needed them, but I didn’t want to shoot these guys unless I had to. They weren’t doing anything wrong, and we’d wandered into their territory just to steal their stuff. Besides, if we killed them, we’d probably have the whole town on our ass, and I really didn’t want to deal with that.
“There’s lookouts,” I whispered to Ally. “Run fast!”
With that, I grabbed her hand to pull her out the door, but the damn screws on the handle were sticking out, and I caught the edge of my hand on them as I shoved the door open.
But a sharp inhale was all I could stop for right then. We needed to keep moving, so I made sure I had a tight grip on Ally’s hand, and then I took off across the parking lot.
“Hey!” one of the guys yelled, and they both ran after us.
“Keep going,” I told Ally when her light-green eyes darted over to me. “They’re not armed.”
The men followed us as we ran through small alleys and parking lots toward the wooded area on the edge of town.
We were about halfway there when I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and I whipped my head around to see the red dragon we’d seen earlier dead on the ground in front of the library. There was blood everywhere, and its head was nearly unrecognizable from how badly it had been bashed in.
The purple dragon from earlier wasn’t too far away, or a piece of it was, at least. They’d cut the damn thing in two, and the top half of it was right next to the red dragon while the tail end was strewn across the road.
It was probably a damn good thing we didn’t have the car at that point, because there was no way around the lower half of the dragon, and between the guts and gore all over the road, I wasn’t sure that little Camry would have made it in the first place. It was already squealing, so the idea of trying to drive it over a bunch of dragon pieces was daunting to say the least.
Still, those crazy fucks had done it. They’d killed a dragon with just axes and pitchforks.
It was impressive, but I couldn’t help but think it was kind of stupid, too. They’d killed those two dragons, and now they were working on a third, but what about the rest? Ally and I had seen two other dragons around here just an hour ago, and the one outside of the pharmacy had appeared out of nowhere. How long could these people keep this up?
“Stop!” one of the guys hollered, but his voice faded into the distance as Ally and I broke the treeline into the woods.
“Hold on,” I said after a moment. “Let me make sure they’re not following us anymore.”
“Okay.” Ally nodded.
I left my suitcase with her, and then I carefully retraced our steps until I could see outside of the forest. Sure enough, the two men were doubled over in the grass, clearly out of breath. I waited for a moment, and finally, they turned around and headed back into town, so I slunk back through the trees and found Ally.
“We’re in the clear,” I told her.
“Of them, anyway,” she said. “We saw those other two dragons earlier, and they were headed this way.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “We need to be cautious.”
“You said it’s about an hour’s walk back to the marina?” she asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
“We better get to it, then.” She smiled softly.
Ally and I walked along in silence for a few minutes, and I took that time to survey our surroundings. The woods were clearly not traveled often. There were a few leaves and pine needles on the ground, but otherwise, the forest floor was undisturbed. There were a few signs of animals, but there were no footpaths that would indicate people walked around in here at all.
As we walked, I thought about those crazy townsfolk. Maybe they weren’t as stupid as I had been thinking. The dragons clearly had some intelligence to them, so maybe if they killed enough of them, the other dragons would learn not to go there.
Maybe it was like mice in some strange, simple way. Like how mice could learn to avoid traps after enough of them had been caught in one.
Whatever the case, those people had been determined to get those dragons out of their town, and I had to give them credit for succeeding.
“So,” I said after Ally and I had been walking for a while. “How do you think Letty and Shannon are getting on?”
“I’m sure they’re fine.” Ally waved a hand dismissively. “Shannon could get along with anybody. It’s part of the reason she would have made such a good lawyer. It’s a shame this happened right after she graduated.”
“Wow,” I chuckled. “That’s so nice of you to say. Especially when she teases you so much.”
“She does,” Ally laughed. “But that’s what makes her so likable. When people tease you, it makes you feel welcome, like they won’t judge you. I don’t mind her teasing me. It’s pretty funny, actually.”
“Hm.” I smirked. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I told her that then, would you?”
“Don’t you dare,” the redhead warned playfully. “If she knows I like it, she’ll stop doing it.”
“Why would she stop if she knows you like it?” I chuckled.
“Because the fun of it is that I don’t,” she explained.
“Yeah, I can see that,” I laughed. “It sounds like you’ve been teased before, huh?”
“My father was quite fond of fucking with me,” Ally said with a nostalgic smile. “Whenever he got the opportunity, he would pick on me about my job or my friends, or, and this was his favorite, the men I dated. But I always knew it came from a place of love, and he always knew where to draw the line.”
“He sounds like a good dad,” I said. “I hope Sammy girl talks about me that way when she’s all grown up.”
“She will,” Ally told me seriously. “You’re a wonderful father. I mean, look at you, you’re doing whatever you can to get to her. I hate to say it, but not all parents would do that for their children.”
“I don’t see how anybody couldn’t,” I scoffed. “That’s your child. They’re your flesh and blood, they’re a literal piece of you walking around outside your body. It’s like somebody just took your heart out of your chest, gave it legs and a mind of its own, and told you to protect it at all costs. I tell ya, kids are wild.”
I shook my head as I spoke, and then I noticed Ally looking at me with a big, goofy grin on her face.
“What?” I asked as my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Oh, nothing,” she chuckled. “You’re just so cute when you talk about Samantha. It’s like your whole face lights up.”
“I do say she’s the light of my life,” I joked.
“It shows,” Ally said.
“Enough about me,” I said. “Tell me more about you.”
“What about me?” the redhead asked, and her light-green eyes looked me up and down. “What do you want to know?”
“Um, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You worked in interior design, right?”
“I did.” She nodded.
“Well, why interior design?” I pushed.
“Hm.” Ally pursed her lips. “I suppose if I had to pick a single reason, it would be my mother.”
“Your mother?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “What did she do?”
“Everything.” Ally smiled. “I didn’t notice until I got older, but my mother had this way of making our house, or any place we visited really, feel incredibly comfortable. Even when we went to hotels, she’d bring my favorite throw blanket, or she’d ask for some flowers to be brought up to the room to brighten up the place. We always had fresh flowers from the garden on the table. Arranging them was one of my mother’s favorite things to do, but I didn’t realize how much of a difference those tiny things made to me until I went off to college and had my own dorm. Slowly, I found ways to make it feel more homey, and I realized that all the things I was doing fell into a certain category, and that led me to interior design. I wanted to help people feel at home in their home, ya know? A lot of people, especially in Westport, just have houses, it’s not personal, so it doesn’t feel like you.”
“I guess I never thought about it like that,” I said. “I can barely remember a time before Sam, so my house has always been filled with drawings and toys and favorite blankets. I can’t imagine not feeling at home where I live.”
“You’d be surprised,” Ally chuckled. “People in Westport don’t like their real things to be seen. Everything has to look like a magazine, but then they’d hire me and say that they didn’t feel comfortable in their home, and I had to explain to them that it’s because they’re not giving themselves the freedom to actually live there.”
“And did they take that advice?” I asked.
“Not a chance,” the redhead snorted. “They’d say it had to be the ambiance or the color scheme, so I’d change up the lighting, add a few decorative pieces, and order them all new furniture. Then they’d call me back in a few months to repeat the process.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. “That’s got to be expensive.”
“I was good at my job.” Ally smirked. “And working for them allowed me to focus on other projects, too, so that was nice.”
“What do you mean ‘other projects?’” My eyebrows pulled together as I looked her up and down.
“Oh, well.” She cleared her throat. “A lot of my high-end clients were extremely wasteful, so whenever they had furniture they wanted to get rid of and were just planning on donating, I would offer to have it removed, and then I’d take it to my storage shed. And all of those pieces were my reserve for my clients that couldn’t usually afford things like that.”
“Wow.” I smiled as my heart melted. “That’s really sweet of you.”
“It’s nothing.” Ally shook her head. “When I was in college, I started volunteering at a women’s shelter, and I just saw so many horrible things and heard horror stories about what those women had been through. So, after I opened my business, I kept in contact with the director, and whenever a woman got out of the shelter and found a place of her own, I’d go to her home, free of charge, of course, and spruce up the place. Sometimes it was just a couple pieces of furniture, sometimes it was a whole makeover with paint and everything, it really depended on what they wanted, but at the end of the day, I know they all felt comfortable, and that was what was most important to me.”
I stared in awe at the kind and beautiful woman next to me. She was more incredible than I’d even thought, and humble, too. Here Shannon and I were, picking on her for having grown up with money, and Ally let it happen because she wasn’t about to justify herself with her good deeds. She knew that wasn’t what they were for, and I respected the hell out of her for it.
