Josie runs as fast as her legs can carry her through the junkyard. Her heart is pounding like a drum and every muscle in her body is begging her to stop, but she can’t. Not if she wants to make it out of this alive. She rounds a sharp corner, her lungs burning, and dives into a junked van managing to hide inside just as the monstrous form of the thing chasing her rounds the corner. She holds her breath and prays to anyone listening as she hears the beast pass, its thunderous footsteps slowly fading into nothing. When it seems that the coast is clear, she finally fills her aching lungs with much needed oxygen. As she sits in that ancient vehicle, she does a quick assessment on previously ignored injuries. Painful, but not anything urgent. The bullet hole in her shoulder though, should probably be addressed sooner than later.
“That fucking scrapper!” she angrily thinks to herself as she watches the blood steadily ooze from her wound. She only wanted to make some extra money while on spring break and figured that guarding a pile of trash would be an easy way to do that. How was she supposed to know that greasy old man just wanted some fresh food for his pet monster?
While quietly cursing herself for trusting a Craigslist ad, she rips one of the sleeves from her favorite hoodie and uses it to bandage the wound, its pale blue color staining red with her blood almost instantly. Removing the bullet would have to wait until she managed to escape. If that was even possible. The junkyard was like a maze, filled to the brim with all sorts of sharp scrap metal sticking out of the ground and precarious towers of rotting trash, poised to crush anyone stupid enough to brush up against them. And even if she did manage to cross the borderline boobytraped yard while outrunning that beast, the entire place was surrounded by a ten foot chain link fence topped with razor wire. Originally Josie thought it was to keep people out, but now she thinks it might be the reverse. As far as she can tell, the only way out is through the way that she came in. And the last time she tried that she ended up with an extra hole.
She sights as she leans her head against the rusty wall and thinks about her lack of options. There isn’t much time until the beast realizes that it’s chasing nothing and decides to circle back. She needs to figure out a plan fast. That thing is far too big to face head on and based off of the scars that mar the creature’s stretched face, it’s pretty easy to assume that there have been multiple failed attempts to do just that. And as if its massive size and mouth of razor sharp teeth weren’t enough, the creature moved surprisingly fast for something with such a doughy frame. Josie felt lucky that her mom forced her to run cross country in high school, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have made it this far.
Josie thinks back to the incident that got her shot. More specifically, the scrappers’ reaction to her being so close to the gate. He was terrified at the prospect of the beast following her to the gate. Despite being the keeper of its home, the man seemed to be just as scared of the beast as the people that he sent in to die. So, maybe if she managed to lure it to the gate, its monstrous presence would be just enough to distract the scrapper while she slipped out of her rotting prison. “Yeah, that might just work,” she thinks to herself. Looking out of the hole that used to hold a windshield, she can see the giant fence that surrounds her prison. Assuming that the fence ran all the way around, it was safe to bet that it would lead to the entrance if she followed it for long enough. In the distance she could hear the thundering approach of the beast’s footsteps, now aware of the absence of its prey. Josie is going to have to move fast if she wants to make it out of here. She frantically looks around for something to use as a weapon in case things went south and she needed to defend herself. She spies a sharp piece of scrap metal buried in the rubbish heap that borders her hiding spot, one the perfect size to be wielded by her scrawny 6 ft frame. She grabs it and frantically attempts to wriggle the makeshift blade from its resting spot, ignoring the stinging pain in her hands as the blade bites into her flesh. The force she uses to get the shard from the junk pile is too much for its shaky structure and upon retrieving her blade, the entire thing topples over, missing her by only a few feet. As a new horrid stench escapes from the toppled tower, Josie hears the beast approaching quickly, drawn to her location by the sound. She quickly wraps the blade with the other sleeve of her already ruined hoodie to form a handle and extracts herself from her hiding place, poising herself to run for the gate. The creature rounds the corner, its thick eyestalks coming into view moments before its expansive pale body. Upon spotting her, the beast’s wide and thin mouth opens into a roar, exposing its jagged, rotting teeth and a stench bad enough to curdle milk. The many trunk sized legs begin to pick the creature’s massive body over the sharp pile of junk that was towering overhead only moments before. Josie clutches her makeshift weapon tightly at the sight of the disgusting beast and grits her teeth. “Let’s do this” she says to herself as she feels her feet push off of the hard ground and propel her towards the fence and hopefully, her freedom.