Canada Under Attack: Where Shadows Walk

Part 7

I stared at her for a long moment, mind racing. Her dad knew my dad??

"If that's all true, then why haven't I seen you before?" I asked.

Tasha's hoodie shifted as a wind appeared with the sun climbing higher in the autumn sky. It nearly hid her small shrug.

"You have. You were just too little to remember," she replied. "When I was just a baby, your dad and mine used to chill together all the time. At least, that's what my dad told me. He told me that you, me, and Cam even used to play together with your mom watching us while they did prepper stuff. But something happened between your dad and mine after that and they stopped hanging out." She frowned at that and I got the impression her dad never told her why.

Talking about our dads made me think about mine. Usually he went on a scouting trip into the city every third or fourth day, to see how things were going. Today was the third day after his last trip. Suddenly I felt a chill of realization.

"My dad doesn't know about the hunters," I said in a hoarse whisper, my gun dropping to my side as my eyes flew wide with the realization. "They might see him." Adrenaline cold and silvery spilled into my veins as fear for not only my dad's, but my entire family's safety took hold. Then I was turning and running along the bottom edge of the road back towards home.

"No!" Tasha cried out, her voice nearly lost in the growing wind, a warm air chinook out of the mountains to the west. "It'll see you before you get there!"

I ignored her and kept running. It didn't matter. This was my family that I was thinking about, my dad. They had worked together to save my life through the first three waves. Heck, my dad had singlehandedly done more than any other person to help us survive the waves. I had to do everything I could to save them from this newest threat, this fourth wave of the alien attack. They were all I had left in this dying world.

As I ran as fast as I could with the heavy pack filled with guns and ammo bouncing on my back, I threw a quick look over my shoulder. As expected, Tasha hadn't followed me, her slender figure nowhere to be seen. While I kind of knew she wouldn't, I was still disappointed that she didn't. She had saved me from that first hunter. I had sort of hoped she'd help me get back to my family and avoid the second one watching the roads.

Unless, ... she didn't want me to go back.

After all, what did Tasha do after saving me from the first hunter? She took me to the ambush intersection away from my house. After that, she wanted to go to the river to check the distillery. No suggestion of warning my parents and Cam about the hunters even with all the talk of her knowing my family.

So yeah, thanks, Tasha, for saving my life and all. But what's your deal with not wanting me to go back to do the same for my entire family? I already didn't trust her. Thinking of what she had just done made me trust her even less. Then I was roughly pushing it aside to focus on getting back home.

Seeing a path on the opposite side of the road leading back up into the houses, I darted across and up the hill along the path. A couple anxiety-riddled moments later I was back amongst the houses. A quick look around to orient myself, then I was making a beeline for my street.

At this point, with fear and adrenaline charging my body, I wasn't concerned about alien hunters. If one had seen me, I'd already be dead. I was more worried about getting back to the house so I could warn everybody about the stupid things than getting a hole in the back of my head.

The chinook was blowing pretty hard by the time I rounded the last corner and began to run down the alley that led to the back gate in the fence around our house, the wind throwing up shifting clouds of dust as it made its way towards me. That forced me to throw up a hand to protect my face as I squinted against the dust. But not before I saw something on the ground close to where our back gate was.