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Her brother’s ashes sifted through her fingers, and all she could do was watch as they drifted into the murky water. She gripped her chest, felt her heart break, and heard her tears splash as they hit the water.
“Kellsey?” a crackled voice boomed in the drainage pipe she’d taken shelter in. She reached for the walkie-talkie, praying Sam’s voice had not given her away.
“Kell—” he began, but she quickly pressed the call button with her thumb.
She was about to remove her thumb when the walkie started to emit a high-pitched noise, like geese warning of danger. Kellsey’s eyes darted to the light at the end of the tunnel. She absently turned the dial on the walkie to “off” as three giant frogs, or lizard like legs came to a stop at the pipes end. She held her breath, held her fear in check, and quietly exhaled when they moved on.
I gotta get out of here, she thought, but she couldn’t crawl back out into the open and the only other way was a dark, dirty pipe. I’ll probably end up in a sewer! Huh! Least they won’t be able to smell me.
With another look at the entrance she’d climbed in from, she slid the walkie into her jeans pocket, kissed her brother’s urn and turned into the darkness. She began a long, wet crawl to nowhere. Those who’d survived the first onslaught, still hadn’t figured out how they communicated, but they always seemed to know where we are, Kellsey thought, could be reading my mind right now.
Distracted by that thought, her right hand fell into a deep pool just as she rounded a bend. Her chin smacked down against a piece of rebar sticking out of an old water-warn concrete slab. A howl escaped her lips but she caught herself when she tasted blood. She had to stop. They were attracted to blood. Could smell it from miles away. One of them swallow her brother whole after a sharp stone sliced through his boot into his flesh.
In a fit of rage and grief, she pounced on it and, with a firm grip around the hilt of her knife, she stabbed and sliced into it until it moved no more.
That’s when she met Sam. He ran from the bushes, pulled her off it and dragged her away…
***
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The more popular a story is, the more the judges will lean towards it, and I could do with some luck this month. It’s been a bad year, so please, feel free to share it around. Thank you so much, Karen
