Changing

Chapter 11

Bullets rang out behind me causing me to jump, but I was already in the protection of the forest and they couldn’t touch me now.

Thunder roared in the sky, drowning out the cacophony of the siren behind us. 

The trees billowed with the wind, groaning in their strain to stay standing. Their leaves were being ripped from their branches and flying into the sky. Then whipping back to striking me, urging me to go faster, faster.

I looked up at the grey and purple clouds. They were moving, twisting in on themselves, convoluted in a surreal looking way. 

They lighted up for a second as lightning struck the earth followed quickly by the deafening clamor of thunder. 

I wasn’t sure exactly how close the lightning was, considering you had to count between the noise and the light, but it was much too close for comfort. 

I continued to race through the underbrush, panting as the exertion finally began to catch up to me. 

I jumped over logs fallen in my way, making a path through the dense plants covering the ground. 

The plants slashed at my unprotected body, drawing blood. I tried to protect Bonnie’s still form in my arms, but she also received cuts. 

Our blood dripped down together mixing before falling to the ground underneath. 

But this was not the worst thing. 

The howling wind cut through me to the bone, and the rain wasn’t helping. Making me shudder violently.

But through this Bonnie’s body was just growing hotter and hotter. 

I ran until my lungs begged for air, and my legs burned with fatigue. 

When I stumbled and almost fell, I stopped, gasping for the water saturated air. 

The air raced into my lungs causing them to ache horribly because of the cold. They stabbed at me raking me from the insides.

I looked around the clearing that I had stumbled into as lightning lit the sky. 

When the lightning illuminated the forest floor for a second, I saw a small dark hole by one of the bigger trees.

The wind wailed, causing the trees around me to moan in protest, their ageless wood creaking and splitting, and the leaves lifting off the ground in a frenzied flight dancing and whirling into the night. 

I staggered toward the gloomy perforation exhausted. Still carrying Bonnie. 

I crouched down by the hollow cave and looked in. If I had been a normal human I would not have been able to see anything except a black void. But since I was not, I could distinguish shapes in dark grey’s and black’s; any other color had been leached by the wayward light.  

I was relived to see that it was big enough for both of us to fit in. The roots of the huge tree had been partially pulled out during another storm, forming the roof. But something else must have dug deeper, because it was much too big for it to have just been created by the tree.

I sniffed the sodden air and detected an odor of some strange animal that was related to a dog in smell, but different at the same time. This must have been the animal  who made the crevice cavernous.

This half known smell caused a small tremor to run down the length of my body. For some reason I couldn’t comprehend this scent sent a jolt of fear into me. 

But luckily the smell was old. Washed out by many days of rain. I didn’t want to find out why I should be afraid of this animal. 

I pulled me and Bonnie into this safe cave. The dirt filling the cavern floor was warm and, thankfully, dry.