The Pod

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - 18th July 2017

Scratching drifted into the conversation, its low volumes amplified in the eeriest of ways. So out of place amongst warm chatter and suits rustling. Vic promptly shut her mouth and threw a glance over at Shade. There it was again, fading in and out as if parts of the noise were too muffled to reach their ears.

The pair were fixed to the seat with their leg muscles in knots. A disjointed, inarticulate noise peeled through the now-inadequate thickness of the door.

"That's just your stomach or something, right?" Vic probed, voice at a hiss and eyes joining his at the door.

Beside her, Shade stared on with lips tight shut. He lifted a finger to them and inched his body off of the seat. The lower half of his suit crinkled back into shape, as he straightened up and crossed the room with careful steps. Heel first and then all the rest of the foot - like peeling a banana or applying a plaster.

On top of an ornate table, which looked suspiciously as if it was from the furniture shop across the road (its 'used' section, to be precise), laid a jumble of papers and coffee cups. Magazines were the closest thing to a weapon. Death by papercut. Nice.

At a prod to his shoulder, Shade swivelled his torso round to catch Vic. She seemed to have followed his example. "Anything?"

He shook his head. "Zilch. Magazines and that's it."

"I don't know, if it likes models with legs up to their eyeballs, things could go kind of well." Her reply was met with an eye roll. Their conversation was cut short by a grating slice at the door. Two heads spun and Shade scowled, going to clenching his fist when a hand touched his. He raised an eyebrow at his companion, who mouthed, "Don't. Rubber. Noise."

Nodding and returning his hand to its previous position, Shade edged away from the pile of 'weapons'. There hadn't been another scratch at the door - instead it had spread down the adjoining wall, the one attached to the shop itself, a noise to wake the dead and turn the guts of living inside out.

For a split second, they stopped and Shade's muscles tensed to breaking point. He narrowed his eyes; Vic was beside the door. Just when he was about to leap at her, the words 'cat thing' and 'coming this way' forming on his tongue, she pointed his way. There were a few sharp-edged footsteps then the claws went back to work somewhere else along the back wall of the supermarket.

"There's a hole in the door," she told him. "It'll get in eventually and I think it might know we're here."

"Suggestions? That's all well and good, but I'm not sitting here just thinking it over like it's my last meal. Probably because, if I die now, the situation itself wouldn't be my last meal-" Vic cut him off, as she tilted her head to get a better look at the tears in the door. He stalked over as she spoke.

"Run for it?" Even before she was finished, he shook his head. "Why not?"

"It'll hear us. And I don't want anything that makes that..." He gestured to the the gauged out wood (and the spot of linoleum she could see the other side), set in three uneven claw marks across. "Anything that makes that mark should stay well away. So we need to sneak out and find some kind of tool shop."

"Fine then, Sooty the genius, lead the way." An unsettled sense grew in the pit of his stomach.

"When we came in, there was a stand...with books on-"

"Generally known as a bookshelf, if you remember the olden days," Vic interjected, lips curling into a smirk. Shade stifled a laugh (which he backed away from the door for, considering the lack of success he had in not giggling like a schoolgirl).