This Was Home [h.s.]

| 16. ORANGE |

I ran past him, allowing my body to slam through the doors. I was practically skipping through the parking lot. My body stopped mid-twirl to see Harry coming through the doors. He was shaking his head, laughter spilling from his mouth.

"Will you stop pretending you're annoyed by me," I sarcastically teased, giving him another twirl.

"As if I have to pretend."

When he said it I could tell he was actively pushing away a smile. He was trying so hard to sound believable, but I knew better. He knew better, too.

A smile was still across my face as I watched the remainder of his drop suddenly. His eyes immediately widened, slowly bringing his hand behind his back. My eyebrows furrowed as I looked over to him halfway across the parking lot.

He motioned his head to something behind me, but he didn't have to say anything. I knew what that look meant. Through the reflection of the store window I spot exactly what he was gesturing towards.

There it was, sniffing around only about 30 feet behind me. It had its ears in the air, pointing towards the door. My eyes widened, realizing the door chimes must have been what alarmed it.

None of this made sense, though. The sun was still out. It was still daytime. We did everything the way we were supposed to.

"What do we do?" I mouthed to him in a panic.

A finger pressed tightly against his lips whilst his eyes flickered with fear. This wasn't a look I saw on him often. It wasn't a look I wanted to see because it meant we were one wrong move away from dying.

He pointed towards the truck which was behind me to my right. It seemed like it was a whole marathon's distance away. How were we supposed to get that far without making a single noise? It still had eyes and could see us, right?

One wrong move.

I nodded my head even with my doubts. It wasn't like I had any better ideas. We just had to be careful and everything would end up fine.

Everything will be fine. Just get into the car.

The gun withdrew from my waistband and my fingers tightly grasped it at my side. I closed my eyes to blow out a deep breath through my mouth, surveyed my surroundings behind me, and took the first step.

Think back to what you know, Brinley. Think.

We knew their hearing was their strongest ability, yes. They also seemed to be most drawn to certain noises, which I learned from Harry. His noise boxes rang with an assortment of jingles and clangs. This coincided with why the door chime must have brought the Crawler here now.

I hadn't turned around to face the Crawler yet. I didn't want to make any unnecessary movements, so I was relying on Harry to guide me on which direction to go and when.

He pointed to the right and gave a thumbs up. His eyes darted back and forth between the creature and myself. My feet slowly moved, waiting for permission before placing my foot for each step. Harry moved with me and we both began to slowly inch closer to the truck.

In the reflection I could see the creature sniffing around the ground still. It was preoccupied for the moment, but that was another thing about these Crawlers. They could be easily distracted, and this time it would be a disadvantage.

I was already halfway there with Harry not far behind. He had the car keys in his pocket and I tried not to think about the noises they could potentially make when digging them out. I needed to focus on one thing at a time. Getting overwhelmed would result in cloudy judgment and that was the last thing either of us needed.