Ten: Secrets in the Shelter

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Behind the farmhouse and beneath the shrubs lay a door

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Behind the farmhouse and beneath the shrubs lay a door.

It was square with a thick metal ring in the middle, and it had survived decades of man's abuse, including two world wars. Many had walked, stomped, jumped on this door never knowing that below was a place of stored memories. Shelves ran along the rectangular room with boxes and canned goods webbed in a spider's fortress. Mounted into the stone above a table with a radio was a locked safe with colorful, magnetic letters that spelled SNAKEWOLF. It had been a long time since light ever touched this secret room until the night a shadow popped the door open and swooped down the ladder.

A burlap sack hit the ground, and Sawyer rolled out, coughing from the dust that exploded in the air. Infinite black devoured him, his heart quaking, the cold concrete shocking his insides. Right when his body started to collapse, the sound of a thousand typewriters snapped all around until an orange flame broke through.

Behind the light, General held up a lantern, the shadows on his face dancing around his black sockets and curved beak. "So naïve. Believe everything you hear, don't you?"

Sawyer jumped back, slid behind a can of peas and poked his head out to notice the SNAKEWOLF letters on the safe.

"You don't know a thing," General placed the lantern on the ground, walked backwards and jumped on the table. "Afraid of your own shadow! How do you expect to save the others if you can't even step outside without someone holding your wing?" He pointed to the letters on the safe. "You see this? What do you think this says, Mohawk?"

They looked oddly familiar, scary even, and when Sawyer realized they were the same angry letters etched in the barn, his mouth began to chatter. "S-ss-Scotty says we shouldn't talk about that."

"Snakewolf!" cried General, jolting Sawyer against the can of peas. "But it's all a lie," he added. "What else do you see?" He waited for Sawyer, hoping he would see something else, something he knew was hidden in the word. But he forgot how young Sawyer was, how new and strange everything seemed to him. General was suddenly reminded that his own thoughts were at once battling to find the answers and the truths around him. "We're all so quick to jump to conclusions without truly looking at what's in front of us," he said, making three swift movements on the safe and rearranging the letters. A new word appeared:

SNOWFLAKE

"You think you're the only one who wants to save the others? Bring down Farelli? You think we're all so cold to not care about what goes on past The Blood Mile?" General banged his wing against the safe, and the F and the K fell on the table. "Buster came to me tonight, told me you have your sights on Farelli. And I'm here to tell you to drop it."

"Oh I won't go near that place..." said Sawyer, unsure.

"What-you-say? Come out of there, will ya? I ain't talking to a can of peas, ya know."

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