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To go out with a fight.
It leaped at me, its jaws opened, and its sharp teeth came for my neck. This time, I couldn’t just stand and wait for it. It would have gotten my head pulled off my neck. I went at it instead and moved to the ground, my knees sliding against the forest floor. I knew it would leave a bruise later, but I didn’t care. I rolled underneath the leaping cheetah, impaled it with my claws, andgot it by the neck. I dragged my claws through it, pulling against every resistance I met on the way until it got to its stomach.
It fell to the ground, bleeding. I stood up, drenched in blood, watching it as it whimpered and died.
We were done with that test, now onto the next.
But we were not. A couple of growls around us alerted us to new companions. I looked up and found a herd of cheetahs surrounding us. I counted six of them. One of them, the biggest, looked to be in the leading position, and it looked at the dead cheetah and then at me. What it communicated with those eyes was glaring. Revenge.
The cheetahs were to the village and had murderous intentions. This was far from over.
Chapter twenty-seven (Luke)
Impossible. That was the first word that dropped into my mind. A pack of cheetahs attacking? I didn’t know them to be social, and I could tell these were a mix of both males and females. They rarely get along except to mate. This was an unusual thing happening.
Hayley moved closer to me until her back was against mine. We watched the cheetahs. We had just killed one of them, and that had been tasking. There was no way we could go up against the six of them. They would maul us to death.
“How did they get here?” Hayley asked as the cheetahs started to make their way down to us. They wouldn’t attack as a group, which I was sure of. Animals aren’t coordinated, and animals like cheetahs prefer to hunt alone.
But this wasn’t hunting. They were here not because we were a source of food to them. They were here to kill us. Revenge effused out of them. We’ve killed one of them, and they wanted to kill one of us.
“We have to distract them,” I said as they continued to move closer, their growls getting more menacing, and anytime now, they would attack.
“How?” Hayley asked.
“One of us has to be the bait. Wait here and fight them while the other runs. I think they will stay here to fight. You have to go get help.”
“I am not leaving you,” Hayley said. The authority in her voice told me there was no changing her mind. I couldn’t leave her either. Not with those things here.
The first cheetah attacked. It was a small one, but very fast, and it came at me. It was hard to evade its attack, and it hit me in the stomach, scratching me with its fangs along the way. I tried to claw at it but missed, and I fell to the ground. It had barely landed before it charged back at me again, and there was another coming for me. I pulled myself up before it got too close. I looked around me to find Hayley fighting off another pair of cheetahs.
I looked up, and there were more standing by trees, not yet attacking but just watching. More of them had come.
The first cheetah came at me again and was assisted, this time by another, which was about twice the size and just as fast. I got a punch into the first one, but the second grabbed at my arm with its teeth biting into me. It was dragging me, and wanted to pull my arm off. I punched at it repeatedly until it removed its jaws from my arm. Then I moved away immediately, so it didn’t come at me again.
Hayley moved closer to me too. We were not winning this. It was obvious.
“Where are they coming from?” she asked.
I couldn’t tell because even now, they had swelled in number, and they had us surrounded. Still, they were not attacking as awhole, but two or three of them on one of us would be impossible to fight off, and even if we did fight them off, there were more waiting. The only option remained distracting them and getting help. If they finish with us, they will head to the village and kill them all.
“Hayley,” I said and turned to her. “You have to do it. You have to go get help. Tell Merine. I will hold them off, I promise you.”
“No,” she said. “I am never going to leave you. Never.”
“The villagers,” I told her. “We need to warn them. They need to prepare.”
“Do you think this is new to them? They will have measures in place to protect them against things like this. This is just us.”
She had a point there. But why would they let us kill that cheetah if they knew others would attack us? This couldn’t possibly be part of the test because there was no way we were surviving this.
“We are in this together,” Hayley said. “We fight our way out of this together. Or we die together fighting it.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it as the cheetahs closed around us, and another leaped at me. I moved down, my claws at the ready, and grabbed at it. I drove through its belly, killing the first one and turning around to get the next, but then I got mauled in the face. I didn’t see what hit me, but I fell to the ground and scampered to get back up. It never happened.
One of the cheetahs climbed on top of me and bit hard into my side while another pulled at my arm. Pain raged through my body, and I screamed out loud as I tried to get them off, but they had me pinned. I looked to my left, and a group of cheetahswas on Hayley, too, and she couldn’t fight them back. I watched as they got her down, and they buried their fangs into her neck, pulling at it, and then she was quiet.
I screamed again and tried to get at her, but I couldn’t move. I was dying. I could feel the life slipping out of me.
