The Anomaly
Author Note: Welcome to all the new readers who have hit follow over the last 24 hours! Glad to have you on board for the launch of The Oak Creek Breach. If you like fast-paced, high-stakes storytelling, you are in the right place. To hear more of my creative work—including original music, audio fiction, and art—be sure to head over and subscribe to my YouTube channel: @ShatteredStoriesandtales. New chapters are locked and ready. Let’s see how long David survives the enclosure.
David parked the heavy food art against the concrete wall and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was 6:00 AM, and the Nebraska humidity was already miserable. On the cart sat twenty-five bags of raw meat feed. Usually, the second the wheels of his cart squealed, the dinosaur enclosure ahead would explode with noise.
The Compies were small, but twenty-five of them tracking the smell of food should have sounded like a flock of furious, screaming geese.
Instead, the lane was dead silent.
David walked up to the thick observation glass and looked inside. The bushes weren't moving. The feeding trough was completely dry.
"Hey," David said into his handheld radio. "Booth two, you copy? The compie yard is totally empty. Did the night shift move them?"
The radio just hissed back with static.
Frowning, David walked around the back of the artificial rock wall to the service door. The paddock used a two-door safety airlock. The inside door wasn't supposed to open unless the outside door was locked tight. It was a foolproof system designed to ensure nothing could ever get into the public park.
David rounded the corner and froze.
Oh, shit.
Both heavy steel doors were wide open, swaying slowly in the morning breeze. The digital keypad on the wall was completely fried, its plastic cover melted into a black puddle on the floor from a massive electrical short circuit.
David’s heart hammered against his ribs. He looked down at the mud between the open doors.
The ground was covered in hundreds of tiny, fresh, three-toed footprints. They looked just like bird tracks, but the deep claw marks showed they belonged to meat-eaters. And they weren't wandering around in circles. Every single footprint pointed straight out into the woods, heading directly toward the public bike trail.
David grabbed his flashlight and stepped out of the bunker, his eyes tracking the prints into the dark tree line. These animals were small—only about three pounds each—but they could sprint at forty miles per hour. And twenty-five of them were loose in the middle of the city, looking for breakfast.
THE DEEP WOODS
Two blocks north of the concrete bunker, the paved ribbon of the Rock Island Trail cut a sharp, blind curve through a dense canopy of oak trees.
Marcus led the trio of cyclists, his breathing steady, his calves locked into a comfortable, mechanical rhythm. The early morning air was thick and cool, smelling of damp earth and river mud from the Antelope Creek ravine running parallel to the path. Behind him, the low, metallic click-clack of his friends shifting gears offered a routine, comforting soundtrack.
To any outsider, it was just a peaceful Thursday morning ride inside the city limits.
But down in the gray shadows of the creek bed, the weeds were moving.
"Hey, Marcus, dial it back a notch!" Ben called out from the back of the line, his voice echoing off the trees. "Some of us didn't skip breakfast."
Marcus chuckled, glancing down at his digital handlebars. His speedometer ticked at a smooth fifteen miles per hour. "Keep up, Ben. The coffee shop at the end of the trail opens in ten minutes."
He turned his eyes back to the concrete path.
He didn't see the animal standing in the center of the lane until he was less than thirty feet away.
It didn't look like a monster. It looked like a bizarre, long-legged bird—no bigger than a chicken—standing perfectly frozen on two slender legs. It tilted its head, its small, dark eyes reflecting the faint morning light.
"What the hell is that?" Greg muttered, braking slightly behind him.
Marcus didn't answer. Instinct took over. At fifteen miles per hour, hitting a solid animal meant a catastrophic wreck. He slammed his hand brakes and yanked his handlebars violently to the right, aiming for the soft dirt shoulder of the path.
Wham.
The front tire jackknifed as it bit into the loose gravel.
The momentum launched Marcus completely over the handlebars. He flew forward through the air, his body slamming heavily onto the asphalt shoulder. The side of his helmet met the concrete with a sickening crack, sending a blinding, static flash of white across his vision.
He rolled hard onto his spine; the wind completely exploded from his lungs. For a terrifying three seconds, he lay paralyzed, gasping for air that wouldn't come, his ears ringing with a high-pitched, metallic whine that drowned out the morning birds.
"Marcus!" Greg screamed, his tires screeching as he and Ben finally fishtailed to a halt.
Marcus groaned, pressing his slick palms into the cold pavement, trying to push himself up and crawl away from the center of the lane. But his left leg wouldn't follow.
He looked down through the swimming, concussed fog of his vision. His specialized cycling shoe was twisted sideways, mechanically snapped and locked into the pedal's aluminum clip. The top-heavy, overturned frame of his bicycle was pinned squarely across his shin like a steel leg-iron. He was trapped on his back, staring up at the tree canopy.
The trail had gone completely silent. The birds had stopped singing.
From twenty feet away, the tiny, bird-like animal stepped forward onto the center line. It didn't scurry away from the sound of the crash. It just stood there, bobbing its head up and down in rapid, terrifyingly precise calculations.
Then, the heavy silence of the ravine was shattered by a rapid, dry cascade of sub-vocal clicks echoing from the deep weeds.
Scritch. Scritch. Click.
One by one, twitchier, three-toed shadows began to step out of the bushes and onto the pavement, forming a wide, silent circle around the fallen giant.
