Stormy

The night was clear with brilliant stars shining brightly, but lightening stuck the horizon and a thunderous boom echoed through the night. Birds screamed in terror and fled from their roosts. Predators and prey alike, came streaming down from the hills in panic. Something was very wrong.

Ginny flew from her bed and thrust her face against the pain. The bright flash and shaking earth roused her from her sleep even though she was miles away from the impact site. She could see black plumes of smoke rising from the hill, and dark shapes blotted out the light from the stars.

She ran from the room as the jangling of a phone cut through the thick silence which had settled over the house. She heard her father speaking in hushed tones from the kitchen. Either he’d been quicker to rise than she was, or he was awake and expecting the call.

She was frightened, but her curiosity compelled her to slowly creep downstairs so she could better hear what her father was talking about. As a high ranking member of the city, he was sure to be one of the first to know when something big happened.

Ginny’s heart pounded in her chest when she crept around the corner and heard the next thing her father said.

“…Call it an earthquake, an accident, anything. We can’t let the public know what we’ve been testing up there. We have no way to account for so many missing people…”

She sprang into the room terrified and furious.

“You said it was from bear attacks,” she said. “You lied to your own family!”

Her father covered the phone with his hand and the smile on his lips was far from reassuring and vaguely sinister.

“I had to, Sweetie,” he said. “You would have tried to stop me. Thankfully I can deal with such an inconvenience now.”

Ginny’s world went dark as a man she hadn’t seen came up behind her. She’d become another bear attack, and no one would think otherwise with the chaos to come.