Read Online Lost Cargo by Hollister Ann Grant, Gene Thomson - Free Book Online Page A

her feet into the gutter and in the dim light seemed to be the same shade as the pavement. Seconds passed. Her figure faded in the fog until her huge form seemed to be rising out of the road.
    The seconds turned into minutes. Travis grew angry as he lay in the dirt. His pulse hammered. Following them all this time. Creeping after them like a ghoul. What was she up to? She didn’t seem to have any weapons, but in one of her huge hands she held a large, flat purse.
    A car with the headlights off rumbled up behind them and rattled off into silence. The smell of cigarettes and beer floated out into the night.
    “Pookie, look,” a man said.
    Travis met Lexie’s eyes and shifted his weight, ready to fight.
    A second man gave a husky laugh. “Boo yeow, what a hit!”
    The heavy metallic
clunk
of a car door sounded, followed by the soft sound of feet pattering across the pavement. A figure came out of the shadows. Sixteen or seventeen, thin, jittery, jogging up and down, with a black ski mask, oversized green hoodie, baggy black pants, and one long, black, mean looking gun. The engine rumbled as the car crept behind a screen of trees. They had it down.
    And they didn’t see Travis and Lexie after all. The mugger went after the giant, who crossed the street. He crossed with her, pace for pace, like a sauntering panther stalking his prey, cut her off, and pointed his weapon at her dull face. Her cold eyes stared out from under folds of fat.
    “Gimme your purse or I’ll kill you,” he said in a husky voice. “And I mean it.”
    Pookie. Streetlight shone over his ski mask. The enormous woman lifted an arm like a tree trunk and held out the purse. When Pookie took it, his eyes grew wide through the mask.
    “Empty. Give it to me.”
    The giant’s jaws opened down to her monstrous breast. Then she lunged, bit off Pookie’s fingers, and devoured his gun and hand in a single greedy gulp. Seconds later, she ripped his right arm out of the socket. Pookie opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out, and he stood there, tottering like a marionette.
    The giant seized his ski mask, jammed his head in her mouth like a lollipop, and snapped it off. Dark blood streamed over her cape as she turned her back to the pine tree. Like a figure from an old nightmare, she opened her threatening cape to the corpse that no longer had eyes to see, once a man, young and strong and raw and cruel, now just a bloody slab of flesh stretched out under a moonless sky. Her cape dragged over the sidewalk. One more step and she stood on the headless body, pulled it into position, and devoured the remaining arm.
    When she finished with the top half of Pookie, she ate through the bottom. She gorged on his baggy pants and swallowed all the pathetic incidentals of his brief life buried in the blood-soaked pockets, gnawed his organs, splintered his bones, and ended with his feet, hard, agile feet that must have jaywalked ten thousand times across the rotten city streets, timing the traffic, daring the cars, predatory feet that sauntered and stole and stretched and ran, now just two bloody stumps oozing onto the sidewalk.
    The grisly feast ended. She trailed her cape over the smear that had been a human being and stared through the shifting fog.
    Get down
. Travis pulled his dark coat over Lexie’s pale hair and threw his arms around her, but to his shock she struggled to her elbows.
    The bloodstained giant turned her back again.
    Click, click
, rapid and soft. The flash went off in succession. Lexie got off ten shots before he could grab the camera and shove her down again. Fog blew over the road in streaming clouds as the giant turned around.
    The car crept forward into the fog.
    “Pookie? Pookie?” The driver screamed. “Monster monster monster monster!” He gunned the motor, threw the car in reverse, hit a utility box, ripped up the grass, and bounced with a bone-jarring thud over the curb. “Monster monster monster monster monster monster!” A