Refuge Book 1 - Night of the Blood Sky by Jeremy Robinson, Jeremy Bishop Page B

the pudding. Polished it off in four heaping spoonfuls and then chugged the water until the bottle was drained.
    “Is there a chance you’ll puke all that up?” Radar asked. He’d noticed the congealed vomit beside the bed. Its odor was hard to ignore.
    Avalon glanced back at the mess. “I think I’m past it. But I’m awake now. I’ll aim for the bucket.”
    “Radar...” Lisa called him from the front room, drawing his name out. She sounded tense.
    “Go ahead,” Avalon said. She sat down. “And sorry for calling you a little shit.”
    “Scrawny little shit,” Radar corrected.
    Avalon smiled. “Right. Sorry.”
    “Radar!” Lisa shouted.
    He left the back room, entering the front room quickly. Lisa stood a few steps back from the window, her hands rubbing her ears.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Do you hear that?”
    He didn’t hear anything at all, but he stopped walking and turned his head to the left. He was about to say he heard nothing, but then something tickled his ear. It was faint. Like a hum. “I think...”
    Bong!
    The church bell rang.
    Radar flinched back, tripped on a chair and ended up sitting on Sheriff Rule’s desk. Lisa screamed.
    Across the room, Radar saw a radio sitting atop a cabinet. He rushed to it, picked up the device and flicked the power switch. Nothing happened. The battery was dead.
    “Is it happening again?” Lisa asked.
    The church answered.
    Bong!
    Radar made for the front doors. He exited into the bright night and looked at the church. The building was as deserted as it had been when he and Lisa had snuck in just a few hours ago. He glanced up at the still purple sky and saw the fading moon. But that wasn’t all. There was a shimmer to the light.
    Just like before , he thought. It is happening again.
    He was about to retreat back into the police station—it was about to get noisy—when he noticed something else in the sky. A shape. Like the letter M.
    It grew larger.
    Fast.
    By the time he realized what it was, his time was just about out. He dove for the doors, knowing he wouldn’t make it fast enough.
    Bong!
    The chiming church bell was answered by an angry shriek.
    Radar turned around as he pulled the station door closed behind him. The only things about the creature atop the stone stairs of the police station that he recognized were that it had a head and wings. The rest of it was out of a nightmare. The wings were large membranes stretched over bony digits, like a bat’s, but on the ground, it folded them up and used them like arms—or legs. Its body was slender and skeletal, powerful for sure, but also light for flying. It moved atop four back legs, each with a single-clawed digit like an oversized eagle talon. Its head and neck were the creature’s strangest attributes. They curved up in segments, like a centipede’s body, narrowing toward the top, where two yellow eyes scanned the area in opposite directions. It had a mouth running up the front of its neck—or was it a face?—that held at least a hundred horizontal-facing sharp teeth, which stitched together like a zipper when the orifice snapped closed. Not very good for biting, but Radar didn’t think that was how it ate. This thing looked like it swallowed prey whole, and he was just about the right size.
    One of the eyes spotted him. The other swiveled around, and then they moved closer together, giving them a more human orientation. The vertical mouth snapped open and the thing shrieked. It charged forward, but all it managed to do was slam the door further shut.
    Radar walked away from the doors slowly. He opened the second set of foyer doors and moved inside the office. The creature seemed perplexed by the clear glass door in its way, and had lost interest in Radar. That was when Lisa saw it—and screamed.
    The creature’s eyes locked onto her, narrowing further and leaning forward, like they could shift to just about any part of the thing’s head. The creature shrieked at them, spewing drool