Page 1 of One Killer Night
Prologue
Running. That’s all there was.
That, and the sound of broken tree limbs that bounced off the forest walls mixing with the cries still falling from her lips.
Her heart thudded, strumming a frantic rhythm of absolute fear as she ran with four boys. They tore past the trees, marking up their hands and looking over their shoulders, until they emerged into the camp’s clearing. A fork in the road.
“Where do we go? What do we do?” the girl said breathlessly, her voice still laden with her crying.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. We’re gonna die here,” one of the boys rushed out, running his hands through his hair as they stood in a group.
“Shut up. We’re not dying,” another said.
She felt one of them hold her hand, and it made her wipe her eyes trying to make the river stop flowing, but it wouldn’t.
“We have to find a place to hide. Somewhere he won’t think to look,” the tallest of the boys said.
“What are you talking about? He’s gonna find us ... You saw what he did. He sliced Mikey’s throat open ... He choked on his own blood.”
The nervous boy panicked again. She couldn’t stop panicking either. Not after what she’d seen. Her eyes closed as sobs began to wrack her body. The image of flesh opening and blood spilling out imprisoned her senses.
She swore the smell of blood still stank with every intake of breath.
“We have to split up,” one of them barked. “That’s our best chance.” Her eyes popped open as that boy walked backward away from the group, shaking his head and shrugging. “If he kills one of you, then that buys me time to get away. I’m sorry. It’s every man for themselves.”
“No,” she whispered, meaning for it to be louder, but it was too late—he was already running toward the mess hall.
The wind blew, but that’s not what made their heads turn in every direction.Hewas coming for them, and he’d do to them what he’d done to the one they’d left behind.
She felt her hand being squeezed before blue eyes connected with hers. “I’ll protect you. We’ll stay together. Everything’s going to be okay.”
She nodded, but a wicked crack of a tree branch turned their heads again, and the four of them knewhewas here.
“Oh my god,” she whispered to herself.
They’d be picked off one by one.
“Go, go, go,” the tall boy urged the one holding her hand. She tugged it so she could make her move. “Hide at the boathouse.”
Her body trembled, as if it knew they would die tonight, but they were running again—until every hair on her body stood and her skin prickled, their feet skidding to a stop.
A bloodcurdling scream was the only sound to pierce the heavens as death occupied the face caught in front of them. His body sank slowly to the ground as his last breath foreshadowed their future. A monster stood before them, wiping his knife over his sleeve.
“There’s no running from me.”
Chapter One
Goldie
Present day, Halloween
“Wait. What the heck are you? I can’t tell.”
My sister, Evie, smiles as she wiggles a bloody severed finger at me through FaceTime. It’s doubtful she can see my returning smile through the minuscule mesh cutout in my blow-up costume, but that doesn’t stop me.
“What it looks like.” I tilt my floppy, oversize head while awkwardly trying to prop my phone against a can of hair spray on a rack in the middle of the Walgreens, before I back up, making a swish, swish, swish sound. “I’m a large theropod. Also known as the OG of predators.” I spin my tiny arms around quickly before holding them open like I’m saying “Ta-da.”
“I’m a muthafuggin’ T. rex.”
