*KRA-KHOOOM!*
A booming thunder rattled Stephanie's insides as she ran to the back yard; a panting Megan on her tail.
Neither of them heard Miles yelling from the balcony.
With the auxiliary power on, the dim light coming from the house and bleeding out into the stormy night made the grounds a little easier to traverse. If you stuck close enough to the walls you could pretty much see what was up ahead. The back yard on the on other hand? That was another story altogether. The light only reached up to a certain point. Past that proverbial border, it was flashlight territory again. You could only make out the dark silhouettes of the gazebo and the big oak, still standing in defiance. Coupled with the increasingly loud white noise coming from the waterfalls past the railing to the east, there was plenty of room for things to go wrong.
Stephanie paused for a moment, allowing Megan to catch up.
"What's *huff* wrong?" Megan dropped the duffel bag and wiped the hair plastered on her forehead with a shaky hand.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdjydzeqsNI&ab_channel=NewRetroWave"Look." Stephanie pointed at a trail of blood on the grass, illuminated by the back porch light; her index finger following it all the way to the darkness beyond. She twisted her toothbrush hairstick, readied her flashlight and started running toward the unknown.
"Steph, wait!" Megan fumbled reloading her revolver, with the one missing bullet slipping away from her and getting swallowed by the gore and the muddy grass at her feet. "Crap." there was no time to lose, five shots was good enough. Fingers crossed. She ran after Stephanie.
"Sarge? SARGE!" the Sheriff's daughter called out to her trusty companion.
No one answered back.
Stephanie stopped dead in her tracks when the beam of her flashlight landed on the nasty prize waiting for her at the end of the blood trail; a fallen Derek.
"Oh, no..."
He was still alive, but not for long; reaching out to her with a trembling hand. Judging by the thick chunk of bone poking through a hole on the leather sleeve of his letter jacket, he'd broken his arm during the fall. He was breathing heavily, choking on mouthfuls of blood. There was a long piece of wooden railing sticking out of his stomach like a stake; hugged by entrails.
"Oh my God..." Megan caught up.
The boy was mouthing something.
"You're gonna be fine, Big D. D-don't worry about it. It's just a-- it's just a scratch-- just a scratch. You're gonna be a Princeton Tiger, r-remember? A Princeton Tiger..." Stephanie tried to convince herself with tears in her eyes. She got to her knees and leaned over him.
Derek placed a bloody hand on her shoulder.
*gurgle*
"Run..." his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, leaving a five-pronged stroke of blood on Stephanie's shoulder as his hand went limp and slipped away.
*KRA-KHOW*
A lightning struck somewhere in the distance.
A large horned silhouette emerged from the darkness.
