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

Emma taps the ground with her foot “I’m gonna stay right here ok...this is a nice little spot, a nice safe spot. You two better not come crying to me though if something jumps at you because you ignored my instructions.” She then snickers thinking that it would have to be something really big to jump the dinosaur.

Luke and Chris walk towards the nest, the whole fallen tree is coated with large amounts of webbing. To their surprise as well is that when walking over to the den it was in the middle of the dried-up lake. Trees nearby were torn down with most of the bark ripped off in a very violent matter. They both walk up to the den and notice that inside are large blobs of silk with protruding tiny spiders crowding the sacs.

“What do you think it's inside of them Luke, they remind me of something from biology class?” Chris asks.

“Only one way to find out, if there are not millions of babies inside, those things will scatter all over the park.” Luke pokes the blob with his antlers and a carcass of a cow falls to the ground. At least what is left of a cow, the flesh has been gone from it for some while, with only the bones, hooves, and bits decayed skin hanging off.

Luke stumbles back at the sight of the carcass. “Woah, Chris… it's a freaking cow, there was a cow inside of it!”

Chris stares at the carcass and looks around again, noticing more webbing all over.“Yeah, I see...maybe Emma is right we should just return to the entrance of the park and leave this area alone. Do you think that ...mmmm these small spiders killed it?

“No, it can’t be the smaller ones. The fangs on them would be too small to even pierce the skin; it would have to do something really big. Luke replies, nudging the carcass of the cow some to see if he finds fang marks.

Chris looks at the dead cow and notices the skull has been shattered as if it was run over by a car. While they both are in awe and continue to wonder what happened to this cow the creature inside its den continues to stare at them. It hides behind some webbing above the fallen tree, two black eyes stare deeply at its home being trespassed upon by them. It jumps down on the ground, it's a large creature the size of a polar bear. Once on the ground it skitters along its slender hairy less stealthy move closer to the intruders. The two front appendages have claws on them. The left claw is broken though with its bottom half there is a hole with a whitish substance covering it. It continues to lurk and makes its way toward the intruders, clicking his claws back and forth.

“Chris!....do you hear that?” Luke asks, turning his head trying to find where the sound is coming from.

Chris shakes his head. “No...but we should stop for real now and get back to Emma.

Although the clicks get louder as the arthropod stands still completely. With a slight adjustment of raising its legs, it raises its left claw at Luke and with its small mandibles moving back and forth it snipes a shot of webbing towards Luke. “T-Tarrrget acq acq acq acquired…..” It whispers.

In seconds Luke falls to the ground as long spools of sticky white fiber cover his body and legs.

“DEER DOWN, I REPEAT DEER DOWN!” Luke screams in panic.

While all of this is happening a large mysterious figure standing behind the trees. What the creature looked like was similar to a man standing up but yet its fur was covered from top to bottom and had large muscles from its arms and chest. It was observing Chris and Luke struggle to escape from the monster.

“So it seems you are alive still...How interesting.” The mysterious figure thought to himself as it walked away hiding in the trees.

Chris jerks his head to where he hears the shot come from and sees a horrific sight. It looks to be a furry large lobster speeding toward his direction. He quickly uses his razor claws to cut down the sticky fibers that cover his friend.

“Okay just stand still, you crybaby!” Chris shouts to Luke. With delicate maneuvers of his sickle claw, one by one the silk strands start to cut with ease making Luke being able to escape easier.

In a muffled voice “But, I’m lying down not standing though.” Luke replies.

The monster is now very close to them as they both assert themselves and run away. It's showing no signs of emotion trailing behind them while shooting its webbing at them continuously. As they run through the park Chris and Luke hear the wooshes of wet silk nearly missing them. Chris discovers that it was aiming for their legs so he decides to continue running although he tries to run in a zig-zag fashion.

“So buddy, pal….You think we can defeat this thing??!” Luke shouted. “I don’t think we can fight our way out of this one, lets us just bail!” Chris shouts back.

Chris starts to dash trying to find trees and rocks to block the aim of this crustacean, although the monster was too smart to use its environment to its advantage. The creature begins to spray a large rock and proceeds to lift the rock, with a large tug of velocity it twirls it around his head showing no regard how close it is above his stalks. With both of its eyes it tracks Luke going to the left side and Chris running to the right side. The crab arch its exoskeleton forward and its right arm forward snipping the rock launching it at Chris. The large rock is hurled at an extraordinary speed barely hitting him although making a loud *bang* along a tree shattering it to pieces. Chris looks beside him that Luke although wasn't harmed as they continue forward leaving the mysterious arthropod in the shadows.

The monstrous creature looks dead ahead with beady eyes as Luke and Chris escape from its clutches. It continues to stay in the shadows but then skitters back to its lair. Multiple monkeys swing by trees as the creature looks upwards and aims up with his web claw. It steadies the movements of the monkey landing and swinging as it shoots another web at the monkey. The monkey is startled by the impact and falls to the ground squirming to be free. The arthropod walks up to the monkey and with its other claw it can grasp the monkeys’ neck adjusting the position from its shoulder and lower jaw it makes a simple snap crushing the windpipe of the monkey and continues to pinch more until the flesh releases from the monkeys’ head. The arthropod smashes the monkey skull like banging a rock to a coconut. The crab delicately places its mouthparts on the monkey's head as it scoops up its brain and consumes the soft delicate fleshy grey matter. The arthropod continues to nibble at its food as it stares over the horizon as another animal soon joins him.

A gorilla wanders through, sniffs the air and looks at the arthropod and sits down next to it. The arthropod stares deeply into the gorilla and scutters towards it. The gorilla feels threatened to see this monstrous creature as it bangs its fists on its chest and gives out a mighty roar. The arthropod watches as the gorilla rushes at itself and then the gorilla goes in for a right hook as the bug grasps the fist before it can reach its exoskeleton. The crunching of its hands begin to grow louder as the gorilla goes in for a left hook. The arthropod then sprays its arm to the ground making it defenseless. The gorilla is now not filled with pride but with fear as the monster reaches out its mandibles and injects its fangs into the neck of the gorilla. The gorilla gasps for air as the tension of its arms grow loose and it grows limp. The monster then lets go of the bloodied hand and pokes and prods the gorilla. The sac of flesh is now decomposing at a fast rate yet the entrails and organs are softer and mushier. The monster shoots globs of silk on the gorilla and then smothers the paste all over the gorilla until it is covered in the web. This will be another snack for the monster whenever it grows hungry.

Chris and Luke have escaped the clutches of the monster despite they feel they are still being chased by it. They continue to head toward Emma to tell her their great story of their escape.

“I think that stupid monster is gone now. We should check on Emma and see if she is safe.” Luke says to Chris.

“Yeah let us go now before that creature decides to attack her as well,” Chris says to Luke. Luke stops for a moment to catch his breath, they see Emma napping on the ground with some leaves that blew on top of her. Chris comes shortly after panting out of breath. He knows the monster is coming this way and that they must make quick haste to move from this dangerous park.

“EMMA WAKE UP YOU BUNNY, SOMEONE OR SOMETHING IS HERE!!” Luke screams from the top of his lungs.

Emma jerks her ears up and is startled by the loud shouting. She sits back down and looks up at Luke and Chris with an extremely annoyed look. “Why you two dingus’s are waking me up from my beauty sleep?”

“Well it's because we were discovering a hideout for us until some large crab looking thing shot some silk at us like a spider. I never heard of an animal capable of doing that, nor to grow that big. We should leave this park now and find shelter.” Chris said.

“YEAH EMMA, YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN IT, IT WAS LIKE *PEW* *PEW* *PEW* AND A *WOOSH!!!*AND THEN CHRIS WAS LIKE *SKRRT* AND THEN A LARGE *WHAM* *BAM *SLAM* YOU HAD TO SEE IT FOR YOURSELF TO GET THE WHOLE PICTURE,” Luke says enthusiastically in fear and excitement.

The squad began to move out of the area, heading toward the outskirts of the park. Out there a slender trunk is nearby sniffing the air. A furry trunk sniffs forward and walks over to Luke. It sniffs some more as Emma hears loud vibrations nearby. Emma looks behind her and looks up in terror as a ginormous fuzzy animal is overlooking them.

“*BWAHAUGH*!!! IT'S A MONSTER!!!” Emma screams realizing how big the creature is.

The large furry creature looks at Luke and picks him up with a thick trunk wrapped around his body.

“WAIT!!STOP!! DON’T EAT ME!!!!!!” Luke shouts.

“God damn it Luke!” in a grunting deep voice the creature responds. “ I'm not going to eat you.” Then it drops Luke to the ground.

“Wait a second….” Luke dazed from the fall stares at the creature. ” Can it be ...GRANDPAPPY?!”

“HO HO HO yes it is young Luke I am your grandfather” the large creature responds. Luke now can see that it resembles a large elephant, a large furry elephant.

“I'm sorry if I scared you all children. My name is Reginald, although you can call me Reggie for short,” Reginald says.

“Hiya Mr. Sir…” Emma responds still in shock how big Reggie is compared to even Chris dinosaur size.

“So children it's not so often you find random kids in the forest and yet here I am looking at three children that are in the woods with no adult supervision,” Reginald says to the three of them.

Chris steps forward and looks at Reggie. His eyes then glance down at one of his legs quickly then says “So why are you here now, in you Central Park. Luke told us you lived in a home of sorts. We were coming to see you, to visit and see if you could answer some questions for us.”

“Hmmm..” Reginald