A Time to Die Read Free Page A

was twice as big as any she’d ever seen, and they always ran from the park vehicles. The porcine watched them and she felt a shiver run up her spine. Then it charged. “Oh crap,” she said and slipped the truck in reverse.
    “What are you scared for?” the scientist asked. “It’s just a pig.”
    “You noticed the doors yet?” she asked as she negotiated an uphill angled corner at ten miles per hour. The man looked sideways at the Jeep door, apparently realizing for the first time that they were nothing more than fabric stretched over a metal frame. “Oh, but it’s still just a damn pig!”
    Erin realized quickly the javelina wasn’t going to give up. Instead of hitting a tree or flipping the Jeep in a ditch, she hit the brakes and slipped it back into drive. A second later the javelina was on them. She figured it would bite at the tires or something and she’d wait until it was alongside and just take off down the trail. It might be able to keep up with the SUV in reverse, but not in forward. She knew these trails pretty darned well.
    The javelina sped up at the last second, and jumped. Erin gasped as it cleared the hood and crashed face first into the windshield with a sickening Whump! The glass cracked and spider webbed, spraying her with little flecks of broken glass. The scientist screamed in a most unmanly fashion.
    The javelina’s bloody snout tore at the windshield, red-tinged saliva flying as it used its razor sharp tusks to tear at the windshield. In a flash it shoved its head through the compromised safety glass. “Shit, shit, SHIT!” Erin yelped and tried to push back, succeeding in jamming the accelerator to the floor.
    The Jeep’s oversized rear wheels squelched in the dry rocky soil and the truck leaped ahead. The javelina bit at her, snapping its jaws down on the steering wheel and wrenching it. For a split second Erin felt the all too familiar feeling of the top heavy SUV overbalancing, and then they were flipping sideways.
    It was only luck that they’d left the cliffs behind before the encounter. The Jeep turned sideways and flipped down the hill three times before crashing up against a huge pine tree and coming to a grinding stop.
    Erin came to, dangling sideways from her lap belt, the Jeep having come to rest on its right side. The javelina was inside, the windshield having completely come out of its frame. Her passenger was resting on the door, a bloody gash on his forehead and the animal laying across his legs. “Crazy pig,” she grumbled. Then, the javelina moved. It wasn’t dead.
    Erin dangled there for a split second as the animal opened its eyes and looked around, and then she made up her mind. She grabbed the seat with her left hand and pulled herself around, the belt biting painfully into her waist as she stretched as far to the rear of the car as she could. The javelina looked up at her movement and locked eyes with her. The look made her shudder with the intent she saw there. It wasn’t the mad pain filled gaze of an injured animal. It contemplated its situation, and her.
    “Damn you,” she hissed, her hand searching blindly behind her. The animal rolled and reached up, snatching her dangling ponytail and jerking. “Ouch!” she screamed as it began chewing and pulling her head closer.
    “Wha?!” the scientist grumbled. The javelina released Erin’s hair and turned to see the man it was lying over. The man moved his head and was only inches from the javelina’s snout. “Oh god!” he yelled, and the animal bit him on the nose. Part of Erin’s mind wondered why it was a dainty nip, and not a full on assault with those razor sharp tusks.
    As he screamed, Erin’s hand finally closed on what she was looking for. She jerked the weapon free from the paddle holster and she brought it around just as the javelina released the scientist’s savaged nose and turned again towards her. She swept off the safety on the Sig Sauer P226 and fired at point blank range, the .40