Nuclear Love

4 | Heavy Metal and Hides

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TAKING A SECOND GLANCE at the house, I swallow my fear and sprint full speed across the asphalt, not even looking for cars at this point. Coming to the dirt road that dodges back and forth through the dense pines, I plant my feet in the dirt, nearly stumbling on a large rock.

This place isn't made for anyone to enter...

A kaleidoscope of "No Trespassing" signs and barb wire fences set up against wooden platforms interspersed in the trees doesn't exactly me the honey glow. But I can still see the candlelight in the window, and I know someone must be waiting. Would they be waiting to help me, or kill me though?

Another howling, now probably within a football field's distance rings out. This time, it sounds less like a wolf howl, and more like something bigger and scarier.

So I run. Throwing caution to the wind, especially as dark shadows start to coalesce, making it seem like every little bush is suddenly a hulking monster ready to eat me.

Ten steps down. Probably another hundred or so feet to the house. Nothing exploded yet, so we're good.

My senses are heightened, my blood coursing through my veins like river rapids and my breaths shallow, as if breathing is secondary to my survival. Thundering in the hills behind me make the setting even more ominous.

I just keep running toward the candlelight. Just ten steps at a time.

I start counting them as if I'm working out.

Five.

Six.

A branch whips across my face, and I duck just in time before it hits into my eye, but it still leaves a stinging gash across my forehead. Warm blood begins to drip into the wind behind me as I keep running.

I'm about twenty feet away from the rambler – I can see boarded windows, doors that have been repaired with all manner of scrap metal and wood, and heaps of garbage stacked in mounds like walls along the perimeter.

Almost there. But not close enough.

Searing pain tears across my right foot as I tumble face first into the rocky dirt in front of me.

I quickly turn around in the dirt, awkwardly shifting my weight on my hips because my foot is stuck in something. And then I see it.

Trip wire?

I try not to vomit as I see where my leg is trapped. Lodged halfway through my leg, and definitely hitting the bone is a thin strand of wire illuminate in the moonlight. It stretches between two trees about six feet apart.

Panic grips its needle fingers into my stomach as a sickening realization occurs.

I'm going to die. I'm gonna die in this nightmare.

I hear the thundering once again, only this time it's much closer – just at the edge of the dirt path I came down. In fact, it isn't thunder at all. And I almost realize it too late.

Because down the path, two enormous glowing eyes shine in the darkness. They stop briefly, but as they raise up and I hear a deep snort, the eyes get closer and closer as they race through the trees at blinding speed.