Survival

1. Angry Girlfriends and Beat Up Cars

The moon shed silvery light over the parking lot. City lights twinkled in the distance, revealing the shape of skyscrapers and tall buildings further off. The weak, filtered light of the moon was just enough to allow the crouched figure to distinguish her surroundings.

The smell of gasoline, oil and burnt rubber stung at her nose, even as she held her breath. Rain pattered against windshields and metal around her. Silence reverberated through the parking lot, insanely loud in her sensitive ears.

This was bad. 

Stephanie ignored the sharp pain in her knees from crouching for so long, ignored the fact that she was soaked and very cold. Instead she concentrated on her location; there was a silver Lexus pressed into her back where she was leaning, and a black ford focus parked in front of her. 

Her heart hammered against her ribcage and pulsed in the tips of her fingers. This is what happens when you get careless. She berated herself, squeezing her eyes closed and taking in a small, measured breath. 

Footsteps sounded to her left, about ten metres away. A gun was being loaded behind her, maybe five cars down the row. The smell of human was everywhere. Stephanie didn’t dare move. She didn’t even let her eyes wander.

There were three of them, she believed, It was safe to assume that there could be more. Her jaw ached, willing her to let her muscles relax.

Deep bass beats thrummed through the ground from the brightly lit club. It had to be at least four hundred metres away- too far to flat out sprint without getting shot. So what? Think of something! Her mind raced as she scrambled to grab on to any semi-plausible plan she could.

Thick rubber soled boots twisted gravel underfoot.

That was Stephanie’s advantage. Humans couldn’t move as fast or as quietly as a wolf, nor did they have sensitive senses or heightened strength.

So use it, she told herself, forcing her body to release tension. Risking a glance, she let her sharp eyes run over her surroundings. A four by four pickup truck sat only two cars down with an empty bed. Height advantage. Sipping in a small amount of air, Stephanie kept a crouch and slipped between cars to get to her target. Her movements were minimal and fluid, blurring her into the background.

A few nerve-wracking moments later, she was stooped next to the truck. Now was the really dangerous part, Stephanie knew. Until she was safely in the bed of the pickup, she was vulnerable to being spotted and shot. Closing her eyes and taking a calming breath, Stephanie reached up and grabbed the smooth, frigid edges of the truck bed and hauled herself up over the side.

Just as she was slipping down to the bottom of the box, her hands slid against the raindrop-studded metal: she landed in the open cargo hold with a thud on her shoulder.

“She’s over there!”

 Stephanie gasped for breath, winded. Gritting her teeth, she flattened herself in the truck, trying to win back some ground. If she were extremely quiet, maybe they’d doubt that they’d seen or heard anything.

“You sure you saw something?”

“Of course I did, the little b-”

Stephanie brought her knees up, balancing on the tips of her toes and launched herself over the tailgate and into the man who’d just been speaking. His breathless yell told her that his buddies weren’t far away. Anticipating a punch, Stephanie moved to the side and watched his fist sail past her. A high-pitched whoosh pierced her left hand hearing and buried itself into the ground with a crack. A loosed bullet.