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[b]The Choice[/b]

By: DankeDonuts

https://dankedonuts.sofurry.com/

[i]BLAM![/i]

The sound of the gun tore Megan away from sleep. Wide awake in the dark, she heard muffled voices. Loud crashes. Her father crying out in pain. She forced herself to not scream. Not even breathe. She’d been taught not to make a sound when the things that bump in the night bumped up next to her.

The next thing she heard was the sound of Dad’s voice. Low. Quiet. Pained. “What do you want?”

The answer was another crash. Glass? A grunt.

[i]‘Dad! I have to help him!’[/i] They’d run drill for this. Megan knew where one of the guns was. She crept out of bed quietly as ten-year-old feet could move. Dressed in pajamas thick enough to count as travel clothes in if she had to leave the apartment in a hurry.

Her room was at the end of the hall. From a walkway to the forward right, two shadows chased each other in the light from the kitchen. There were three doors ahead of her, to the left; the closest, the bathroom, her dad’s room. She hadn’t even made to the first one before the wall to the right shuddered – [i]Bw’dukk![/i] – sending all the pictures hung there crashing to the ground. Her spelling bee second-place win. Dad’s college graduation. Mom’s photo of Mount Rainier from a long-ago vacation. Memories of a life now split in two.

In the closet, a package shoved in back of the boots and other autumn clothes. Labeled ‘Christmas Lights,’ it had a string of the things piled up inside to different attention from the smaller package. The lid had to brass clips, and she could not open them quietly. Her fingers, and her heart, froze each time one clicked open. The revolver was heavy in her hand, but she knew how to hold it, and fire it. Dad had made sure of that. Trips to the local gun range had become a regular feature of her weekends with him, regardless of what Mom said.

[i]'It's a dangerous world, and you need to know this stuff.'[/i] Her father’s words followed her on the slow walk down the rest of the hall. Echoing louder than the curses and grunts that were being passed between two furious men. But not louder than the crash that just preceded her arrival into the walkway.

The living room was immediately before her. There was a hole in the front window, the pierced curtain glowing yellow-white from the streetlights. A semi-auto pistol had been thrown atop the couch cushions below. The door was wide open, and shadowed before it was her father, his face and chest pressed against the wall. His right arm, the further one, twisted behind his back. The other was smearing blood on the wall. The man holding his arm and back both was tall, and broad, and almost bald for how short his hair was cut. His face was sharp and his eyes were hard and just the sight of them turning on her felt like a punch in the stomach. She could barely make herself level the gun at him, she was so scared. Could a bullet actually get through whatever was stuffed inside that stitched-up leather jacket?

Dad followed the madman’s glare to her. One of his eyes was filling with blood from a cut on his brow. “Megan! Get out! Run!”

She swallowed and leveled the weapon at the intruder. "Get away from my Dad!"

The brute just chucked, a quick and derisive snort. "He ain’t no prize, kid." He turned his attention back to his captive. "Show hah yah mahk."

"I don't know what you're ta--[i]aaaak[/i]!" The intruder shoved his elbow upward, and something inside of Dad cracked.

"I said [i]show hah[/i]!"

Slowly, and with great pain and no shortage of gurgling, Nicolas Mckinney reached to his upper lip and flipped it inside out. Glaring from the pink were a series of blue-black lines that meant nothing to the girl. They could have been infected cat scratches.

"What... what does that mean?"

"It means he's workin' fah tha things that wanna make you lunch," the intruder answered.

She’d heard the stories. About kids from the high school going missing. Including her friend, Becky Vitchner’s, older sister, Kerri. A week gone now, and no word. Rumors of a teacher who had stopped showing up to work one day, and was now only seen at night. Pale and strangely graceful, with glowing red eyes. Calling out to their former students. Hordes of rats chasing people into the sewers. Legions of shovel-wielding maniacs slinking around the urban shadows. A club in Mid-town, that leather-clad lunatics kept trying to scare people out of going into. People waling alone at night, suddenly dropping to their knees in manic laughter before vanishing into the fog.

"Don't listen to him! He’s crazy!" her father spat.

The big man butted his head against Dad’s to shut him up. Megan shrieked. Then he nodded towards the pierced window. "You know there's a wah goin' on, right? Just outside yah dooha? Well, he ain't on your side."

No, he couldn’t be part of it! He was her father! He’d taken care of her all her life! Taught her how to defend herself and keep out of the dark. To keep one step ahead of it. “That… that’s not true!”

The big man shook his head. “He sold you out to the monsters. Sold us all out. And, now that he’s been made, it's not too long before his boss turns up for a taste ah you an’ him both.”

A sudden strength too her father, and he kicked them both back away from the wall. "No! My Mistress would never-- She loves me! She needs m--[i]aaaak![/i]" The stranger ran them both back into he wall. Hard enough to send Dad’s chest smashing partway into the drywall.

"I said [i]shuddap[/i]!"

Megan screamed, “Don’t hurt him!”

Dad’s mouth was bleeding. "Calm down, honey. It'll be alright--"

The big man roared, "No, it won't! Not for you! yah're a traitah to yah species! To yah own kid!"

Dad started to say something, and then lowered his head. He started crying.

In the silence that followed, a part of Megan – a part she hated as soon as she knew it existed – asked, [i]‘How could Dad protect her from everything in the dark, unless he already knows what’s in there? And how could he know unless…?’[/i]

“What did you do, Dad?” She lowered the gun for just an instant. All the time the stranger needed to spin Dad around and present him as a living shield. But, with more than a foot of difference between their heights, she still had a shot at the big brute’s head.

Which didn’t seem to bother him at all. "You got spirit. I like that. I'm gonna give you an oppahtoonity to make the world a bettah place. I'm gonna let [i]you[/i] kill 'im.” He nodded to two locations on his captive’s body. “Put a bullet in his head, make it quick. Put it in the gut, make it slow. Dunnit mattah to me. But I garrantee you, he's dyin' tonight. And I think we'd both rathah he be the only one."

Megan’s father looked back to her with tears in his eyes. And terror, and love, and... Guilt?

The stranger smiled and nodded. "Yeah, you see it. You know.

"Nooo!" Dad shook his head. "I love you, Megan! I would never do anything to hurt you! We’ll get through this, and I promise you I can get you somewhere safe!"

“Safe from [i]what?[/i]” Megan demanded, tears in her eyes. She raised her weapon, hands wavering between two targets.

Dad called a target for her. “Shoot him, dammit! [i]Kill him[/i]!”

The big man’s eyes showed no fear. No guilt at all. "So, whose side ah you on, kid? Take tha shot."

[i]BLAM![/i]