AllFreeNovel
Share Us
GWEN
Iled the way into the sheriff's office, trusting Kaio to watch my back. He wouldn’t allow Sandy or her Rock Beast partner to attack me from behind.
Once inside, I glanced around the old-fashioned building.
“Bloodworm really was living out a fantasy with this place,” I muttered.
“I know, right? Did you see the boots that creep was wearing?” Sandy asked with a chuckle.
I gave her a sidelong glance. When she had a chance to meet the nasty piece of work running this show? “I missed the boots, sorry to say.”
She gave a little shrug. “If we were back home, I’d say they were snakeskin. But they bore a striking resemblance to the skin of one of our guards downstairs in the dungeon.”
I shuddered, but I completely believed her. Bloodworm definitely struck me as the type to use the skin of his subordinates to make a statement.
I began moving through the space, opening doors and cabinets, looking for anything that might be useful. Sandy crossed the room to begin searching the other side.
As I rounded a corner, I caught a glimpse of a barred cell.
Why the hell had Bloodworm bothered with a jail cell?
Of course, the rest of this faux-western movie set of a town had all the hallmarks of pseudo-authenticity, too. I guessed Bloodworm had been determined to have his fantasy town designed to his specifications.
As I turned to leave the room with the jail cell in it, I caught sight of several old-fashioned -looking guns hanging on the wall behind a desk on the far side of the room.
“What have we here?” I murmured to myself.
I was a New Yorker, born and raised—the only thing I knew about guns was what I’d seen on television.
But if these were likely to help me survive this weird-ass death race, I was willing to learn.
Though to be honest, I preferred the idea of a wooden baseball bat with nails hammered into it, like the one I’d imagined using to bash in Bloodworm’s head.
If I could find some metal spikes, maybe I could get Kaio to pull a branch off a tree for me.
Shaking my head at my own thoughts, I moved behind the desk and stared up at the guns hanging behind it.
Carefully, I used both hands to lift a long-barreled rifle off the hooks holding it to the wall.
Carrying the gun to a nearby window, I examined it, trying to determine where the bullets went. What little I remembered from television shows I’ve seen suggested there was usually some kind of slot in the top where the bullets—or were they called cartridges?—were supposed to go.
Whatever the projectiles were called, I didn’t see anywhere to put them in this weapon.
Maybe space guns are different.
I set the rifle gingerly on the top of the desk, then lifted down one of the two matching pistols from the wall display.
I couldn’t find any place for bullets to go in this gun, either. It had a round barrel like some of the pistols I have seen on westerns, but once again, no place to load it—as far as I could tell, the barrel itself was molded from the same piece of metal as the rest of the gun. It had been painted to resemble something with a wooden stock, but it all felt the same under my touch.
It made me nervous to do it, but I slipped the two pistols into the pockets on the side of my standard-issue jumpsuit. Maybe Kaio could help me figure out how they worked.
Assuming I don’t shoot my toe off in the meantime.
I had just picked up the rifle again when Sandy screamed in the other room.
My first instinct was to freeze, but I broke through my paralysis and dashed into the room she had been searching, where I found her pressed against the far wall, cowering away from the creature that had cornered her there.
Dear God. What was that thing? It was the size of a bear, large and lumbering, but covered in scales.
