Page 21 of The Last True Hero
A shard of glass still clinging in the gaping window of a jeep reflected back a monstrous white creature behind her. She gasped. "What the hellis that?"
"Keep moving," McClain told her. "I can smell it now. Smells like a cat. A large cat."
Shadow-cat. The very name of it obliterated all her senses. Mia began to panic. Nobody had ever seen one and lived to tell the tale.
Her feet were still moving. Her body felt distant though, and she realized her hand was on the butt of the shotgun she had strapped over her shoulder.
"We might have to run," McClain told her. "If we do, you go on ahead." He glanced back as they turned the corner. "Can't see it anymore, but it's still there. I'll cover your back."
I don't know if I can.The words dried on her tongue. All she could see were her parents lying dead in that truck. Her mother's dark arm hung out the smashed window, those fingers lifeless.
"...got this," McClain was saying. "Mia? Mia, are you listening?"
She looked at him blankly. "Shadow-cat."
His thumb rubbed the inside of her wrist carefully. "I don't think so. It's got stripes, but it's white. That doesn't sound like a camouflaged creature of prey. And shadow-cats are larger than this. They were created by gene-splicing in a lab. This... this looks like something natural caught a few rays of radioactive chemical somewhere along the way. It's all warped, from what I've seen on it."
Mia focused on breathing. Okay. Not a shadow-cat. She could cope with that.
"Mia, I won't abandon you," he told her. "I just need you to focus. Can you do that?"
She nodded. The feel of his hand grounded her. Somehow McClain was so solid that he made her feel safe, despite the state of the world.
"Good. Let's move. It vanished, but I can still smell it out there. Somewhere. I think it's circling around ahead of us."
They paused at the next intersection. Mia unabashedly held his hand. Broken cars cluttered the streets like a metal graveyard. Some were parked right in the middle of the pitted asphalt. Others looked like their owners had just stepped out of them, except for the rust and body damage. One door hung awry, swinging in the wind. She had the sudden thought that people had fled from their cars here. Maybe it happened right after the meteor hit the earth 140 miles east of this place. The cars were packed in along the road, as though people had been trying to escape something.
There were dozens of places the creature trailing them could hide. Rubble was strewn into the streets from an enormous building. The walls looked like they'd been pink or red once, but now they were bleached a faded peach. Wind stirred a few dry leaves. Nothing else moved. No matter where she looked.
McClain's nostrils flared. "It's between us and the camp."
"Deliberately?"
He hesitated. "I don't know. It knows this terrain better than we do. Maybe it just thinks a better place to ambush us lies ahead. It knows we saw it." He looked to the left, down the street that cut across the one they stood on. "We could circle around."
"We don't know what's around any of the corners," she pointed out.
McClain looked uncertain again. "I'll hear if there's something coming."
"You and your super freaking senses," she grumbled, slinging the shotgun off her shoulder. "And don't look at me like that. I'm not going to use the shotgun unless absolutely necessary."
A tail lashed ahead of them. Mia froze as an enormous cat appeared in the street.
A growling huff of warning came from its throat. She could see it now. Face twisted with mutation, those golden eyes locked on the pair of them.
And then something that sounded like a strangled baby cried out.
"Aw, hell," McClain suddenly swore. "It's not hunting us. It's protecting its kits. We walked right into its home territory."
"Is that... a tiger?" She'd seen an old world animal book once. Sage adored the book as a kid. Mia vaguely remembered something golden with black stripes and a regal expression.
This was neither golden, nor regal. Itdidhave stripes, however, and a massive tumor growing up the side of its face.
The creature picked up its kitten by the back of the neck, watching them with dangerous eyes. It suddenly leapt from the street onto the balcony of a faded pink hotel, a distance of almost eight feet that it cleared in a single bound.
McClain let out a breath. "I didn't think they were white."
"We don't exactly know everything about the old world," she pointed out. "Only what survived in books, or was passed down by word of mouth once our ancestors came out of the underground bunkers."
