She of the Sea

1 of 53 - A Rude Awakening

They came without warning in the middle of the night.

Being a light sleeper, Mya snapped awake at the nearly imperceptible sound of a lock pick scratching in the dead bolt.

She threw back the covers and ran to her daughter's room without turning on any lights. "Cassandra, wake up. We have to hide."

"Momma?" Cassie's groggy voice came across as both question and protest.

"No time to explain. We have to get to the panic room." Mya grabbed her daughter's arm and physically dragged her from the bed.

"Ow, Momma you're hurting me."

She couldn't spare a moment to apologize. They had mere seconds to secure themselves. The pupils in Mya's eyes dilated until all her whites disappeared leaving only jet-black orbs. At a quarter mile distant, a single halogen bulb hanging from a street lamp and shining through a high window provided enough ambient light to illuminate her way.

From the front of the house, she heard the rusty hinges of the door creak open when the hunters defeated the lock.

Mya fumbled at the lever to the steel-lined concrete door to their bunker. She struggled to pull it open. Even on lubricated, heavy duty hinges, it weighed nearly a ton.

A man's whispered voice reached Mya's hypersensitive ears. "Check the bedrooms first."

Mya's breathing hitched realizing the hunters would see them as soon as they rounded the corner. After she managed to open the steel door wide enough for them to slip through, Mya shoved Cassie through the opening.

The girl shrieked as she lost her balance and fell onto the bunker floor.

"This way," one of the hunters shouted after hearing Cassie's cry of distress.

Criss-crossing flashlight beams punched through the darkness. Heavy soled boots drummed against the floorboards. The hunters were almost on top of her. Mya turned sideways to fit through the narrow opening.

"Contact!" One of them exclaimed as he shined his flashlight on her face. He unleashed a volley of automatic rifle fire. The man had reacted, likely high on adrenaline, and had not aimed carefully. Most of the shots ricocheted off the thick steel door, but one lucky round buried itself in Mya's shoulder close to her neck.

She yelped at the searing hot pain, slipped through the doorway, and collapsed to the bunker floor.

Cassie knelt at her mother's side.

"The door," Mya shouted and pointed.

Cassie leapt toward the opening. She pulled the lever until it was nearly closed, but one of the hunters snaked an arm through the crack, grasped her slender wrist, and dug his fingernails into her soft flesh.

"He's got me, Momma," she shrieked. The door was being forced back open from the other side.

Ignoring her pain, Mya rushed to her daughter and got to her knees. She opened her jaws wide, bit down on the hunter's arm, and shook her head as a dog would after latching onto the back of a rabbit's neck.

The man's banshee-like scream reverberated through their room. He released his hold on Cassie and yanked his arm back through the opening. Together, mother and daughter grasped the lever door handle and pulled it shut, giving it a half twist to engage the locking mechanism.

Both sank to the floor and rested their backs against the door.

Cassie began to tremble all over and sob.

Mya wanted to hug her child, but she could feel blood pulsing from the hole in her shoulder. The bullet had apparently nicked an artery. She didn't want Cassie to see the damage and pressed a hand over her wound to staunch the worst of the flow, to buy time for her little girl.