Hunger (The Hunger Series Book 1) by Jeremiah Knight Page A

Then with a quick swipe of its claw, the Stalker severed Peter’s rubber band. The black band, freed from one side of the truck, snapped away, striking Peter in the gut while the still-attached side of the cord, still wrapped around his waist, yanked him off his feet and slammed his head into the bed’s side wall.
    Vision spinning, Peter tried to right himself, but the loose floor of spent bullet casings rolled under his feet. There was nothing he could do to help Ella, who was still held in place by her rubber band, and she wasn’t heavy enough to lean back very far.
    And then, in a flash of vicious motion, everything he thought he knew about Ella changed. With a battle cry she reached forward, meeting the Stalker’s reaching head, and as the creature tried to sever her head with its teeth, she clung to its face and buried her thumbs into its eyes. There was no hesitation in the action, no squeamish flinching. The motion was fluid. Practiced. Without remorse or revulsion.
    The Stalker shrieked, twisting its head upward. Ella’s thumbs slipped out of the ruined eye sockets with wet pops. And still, she didn’t stop. While the monster had its head turned skyward, letting out a tortured wail, Ella punched the thing in the throat, connecting with what once might have been an Adam’s apple. There was a crunch of cartilage and flesh that cut the Stalker’s cry short and left it thrashing and gasping. Ella ducked as the creature’s writhing claws passed over her head. And then it was gone, spinning over the pavement behind them.
    As he starred at Ella, bewildered by what he’d just witnessed, she turned down to him, gazing hard at him, and shouted, “Ten o’clock!” The words snapped Peter back into action. There were still three Stalkers left. While Ella stretched against her rubber band, trying to recover the shotgun, Peter found his feet, latched onto the machine gun and swung the barrel left to ten o’clock.
    He pulled the trigger, unleashing four rounds, but the nearest Stalker had anticipated the attack, ducking and dodging to the side faster than he could track. While he followed it, the second moved in for the kill, leaping up to be met with a hail of buckshot. At a distance of fifteen feet, Ella couldn’t miss. However, as the buckshot dispersed, it also lacked the lethal efficiency of a close range shot. The metal balls punched into the Stalker in a wide spread, creating many small, non-lethal wounds rather than a big hole. But the impact and pain generated by the shot caused the Stalker to fall short of the truck and stumble upon landing, craning its head down to look at the rivulets of blood now running down its body. In the long run, the wounds could prove lethal from infection, but in the short run... The wounded Stalker rejoined the chase, lagging behind, less of a threat, but determined to join the feast.
    Peter fired a second volley at the Stalker to his left, missing once again, but forcing the monster to retreat into the trees. There were four of them now. Another had joined the hunt. Two on the right, one on the left and the injured creature, slowly falling behind.
    Maybe some of the buckshot pierced a lung?
    The situation was improved, but he was also dangerously low on ammo. He’d lost count, but knew there wasn’t enough to miss again. He swung the barrel right as the two Stalkers closed in. He lined up the shot, prepared to send a single round in the head of the nearest Stalker, but then the truck rounded a corner. No longer held in place by the rubber band, Peter was flung to the side. Instinctively, he gripped the machine gun to stay upright, but that also meant squeezing the trigger.
    Bullets raged into the air as casings rattled to the truck bed. Peter tried to pry his finger away, but his falling weight had wedged it in tight, nearly to breaking. Ella ducked as the barrel swept over her head, narrowly avoiding the chaotic barrage. The only thing that saved Jakob and Anne from being mowed