Animalia by Cristian Johnson (free novels to read txt) 📕

Chris gasps, shaking his head. “Nooooo.” He sees the twins covered in blood, moving toward him. Both stop right in front of his feet.

Evan raises his head and manages to say “He’s here…..”

Ethan continues “Cc--ole .... says he’ll find you, Chris…” Ethan mutters.

Chris looks in shock as the both of them stare off into the sky and stops breathing. They die right in front of him, bleeding out... He can now see Ethan has had his belly scratched immensely. Deep rakes of five, making his innards fall out. Evan was even worse, most of his legs were chewed and barely ripped off and his neck on his bottom side is torn to shreds. Chris gasps again and looks up to a building nearby, a shadowy figure with two emerald eyes staring at him. It's Cole, watching him with a sly grin on his face, he then disappears into the moonlight. Chris’s eyes roll back as he screeches loudly. The crows flew off from their hiding spots as death has been taken on this harsh world.

Weeks have passed but the image of her dead brothers is something Emma will never forget. The pain of facing his childhood enemy hits Chris hard. It seems that Cole is the new evil of this new city, but then what killed those animals in the park. There might be two new killers out there to make the lives of Chris and his friends difficult. The real question is where and why they are doing this, but we may never know.

Chris and the gang have been walking from road to road following Reginald as they trek back to the high school to meet up with a couple of his buddies. Emma remains in the back in her world of pain, sadness and misfortune. Her ears no longer stand up and proud, they are droopy, her eyes are bloodshot with bags on them. That spark of energy she offered to the gang is gone, and gloominess has taken over.

Luke turns back, and begins walking with her. “Hey Emma… how are you holding up?” He asks, knowing the answer. He lost his father when he was young.

There was no response from her as she had her ears down and continued hopping slowly. Chris looks at Emma and tries to cheer her up. Chris intentionally trips himself up tumbling on the ground. Emma looks at him with no expression as she walks right around him.

Chris gets up and wipes off the dirt off his face as he also gets a bit sad. Reginald raises his trunk as he sniffs the air and continues marching through the city. The place Reginald was leading them to was at the edge of turn that had more of a countryside environment with less rubbage around it.

Luke walks slowly, following his grandpa blindly. Then as the scenery changes some he looks up, “How long till we get there Gramps. I'm hungry for some mmmm meat please.” Luke moans.

“Well I don’t think we're going to get any meat anytime soon, but you're free to eat this grass where we are walking on. Luke with a small frown sighs as he goes off to the right of the road and eats some grass. Chris tries to talk to Emma again.

“So Emma… what's your favorite color?” No response from Emma. “Ok..Hmm… wanna hear a joke. Why was 6 afraid of 7? Cuz 7 8 9!” Chris chuckles loudly.

Emma looks at Chris with a formal look as she looks back down at the ground. Chris proceeds to try one more time.

“Emma may you please say something to me please...I don't want to look at you so sad all the time. You need to talk about it, it will help you.”

She looks at him and replies, “Leave me alone. Stuff happens and I just want to be by myself for a while ok.” Emma starts to tear up as she hops away from the group at a fast pace. She then quickly adds “Things are just too much for me at the moment. Just leave me alone.”

“EMMA!” Chris shouts.

Reginald stops and looks at Chris. “Let her go, she’ll be back eventually. She's strong and just needs more time to grieve.” Reginald explains.”We all grieve in our own time. “

Luke caught up with them with a full stomach of grass and other vegetation. Luke looks around and notices that Emma isn't around.Luke beginning to speak “So what happ-”

“Don’t even ask.” Reginald and Chris said simultaneously.

Luke shuts his mouth as they walk and soon feels the hard concrete turn much softer as they are leaving the city. The grass began to get less green and more yellow as well as taller. The sun was now able to shine easier as the rays glare on the gang. Luke wasn’t holding up so much with the bear, Chris was fine with it, and Reginald was used to hot weather from his war days.

“Reggie...you said you once knew my dad right?” Chris asks.

“Well yes young sir. Your father was a great man and he was with me at the same platoon. We were deployed to the desert area, sand and heat all the time. You weren't born yet, your mother was about to give birth to you. Let me tell you a story of what kind of man he was.

One day your father had decided that he would infiltrate an enemy camp that seems to have all the supply in the world by himself. Even though the colonel told him not to do so. Alas he disobeyed and tried to get me into this mess. I told him no and that I wouldn’t go, but he was my best friend and I had to make sure he didn't get himself killed.

We left at midnight when the patrollers of our camp were asleep and sneaked out of bounds to the desert. It was hard to find the camp, but we did. Scouting the area we realized that this was no regular enemy camp. They weren’t enemies of our army but bandits that stole food and supplies from a nearby village. He decided that the village needed our help. We were going to take back what they stole, we loaded the supplies onto our bags. We found some bushes and hid them underneath the foliage so we can get them later.

It took three hours to have almost every supply and food crates out of the camp when your father decided to do the unbelievable. He knew that if the bandits were not taken care of they would just come back and take the village's food again. I told him we didn't have the firepower to take all of them on, including the fact that if the base was to ever find out we did this; we could be in trouble. Your father Chris… he is hard to convince but after some deep breaths and a couple kicks into the sand, he decided to walk away from the camp.” Regianald tells the story.

“But- Gramps that's not how the story ended!” Luke sohuts.

Reginald grumbles. “Boy you have to be patient. I was getting to that part. Like I was saying we were leaving the bandit camp and unfortunately an elderly woman who was from the village was nearby and we assumed she was confused that this wasn't her home. We walked up to her, but with the moonless night she thought we were the bandits and screamed. She was so scared she backed away and fell on a ditch down a hill. We both reached for her, we wanted to save her, but her time on this Earth was done. Suddenly flashes of light and grumbles in a foreign languages surround us. They had found us.

“Well…damn, I guess that's how the tumbleweed tumbles ain’t it buddy old pal.” Chris’s father said as he sighs.

“I mean we had a good run didn’t we?” Reginald said, trying to sound positive.

“Um, Luke, your gramps just said a bad word!” Chris shouts in excitement.

“Chrisssss….Shut Up! Your ruining the story you douchebag!” Luke scolds Chris.

“HEY HEY! WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE RIGHT NOW MISTER,OR I’M DONE TELLING THE STORY YOU CHILDREN!” Reginald shouts to regain control of the conversation.

We did get away, and tried to crawl back to basecamp. That's when I heard it, hissing sound behind me. A large snake wrapping around my ankle. It was a king cobra, in our attempt to escape we disturbed its home. Your father stood still and stared back at me and the snake. One move and it would bite us both and only 30 minutes before we stopped breathing. We watched as the cobra rose flaring its hood, but it was more interested in us than feeling threatened of being invaded. Even though we had only mere seconds before the bandits were bound to catch us I tried to take out my combat knife out of my holster by my leg. I went in with my arm slowly while still looking at the cobra’s eyes, and your father was nervously breathing as he too had a weapon with him. A revolver loud enough to alert our position, or a silent knife on me that could risk me getting bitten. That was when everything went to crap.

“Ok… Don’t make any sudden movements you hear..” Reginald said as he tried to calm himself down.

“It’s ok, just do the procedure that we learned from boot camp alright..?” Chris’s father says.

I lunged as fast as I could but your father somehow knew the snake was going to strike me so he shot it in the head. We breathed deeply in relief, but it was short lived, the bandits had found us. They took us to their leader, and wanted answers. We told them a fake story, that the supply was gone. We didn’t understand much of what they were saying but it seemed we had to play a game which involved guns. We sat quietly as multiple bandits joined and laughed to watch our fate.

Reginald shakes his head. “The gun spun and spun and stopped on your dad's directions”.

He picked up the gun and put the barrel up his skull and shot it. A small click was heard as your father sighed. Another bandits took the gun from him and spinned it again. It landed it on me. This went on for a while, it seems like it was forever for me and your dad though. Eventually the leader soon got impatient and as I counted how many rounds left till there was only one slot left. The gun landed on me again. I looked at your father who wasn’t holding up well, he must've known as well how many rounds are in his gun.

“You think this will work?” Reginald imitates speaking with his mouth silently.

“No, but we can do a small diversion to divert their eyes on us.” Chris’s father mouths.

For he was shaking when I put the gun to my head. I had one chance to save