Page 51 of Captured
I inch closer, moving so slowly I’m almost still. My heart hammers so loud that my ribs hurt, but I manage it. My fingers close around it and I exhale, my breath shaking. It takes a gargantuan effort to keep it silent.
I have to get out without being detected. I can crawl along that wall and once I’m outside, I’ll run away as fast as I can.
Then my foot slips and a pebble rolls, its sound just a dead whisper below the terrible noise of flesh tearing and animal feeding. It’s nothing, just a tiny pebble rolling.
But it seals my fate.
All at once, the three apex predators turn from their kill and their cold gazes meet mine. Blood drips, shocking red, wet and glistening, over their brilliant green snouts.
I blink and the world disappears into blessed darkness. When my eyelids open again, the apex have moved. They’re somehow facing me, all three of them, curious, intelligent stares on my slumped body.
There is no mercy there. I don’t expect it and I won’t be given any.
I don’t cry, don’t scream. I just shut my eyes again.
In the stillness before death, I find peace.
