Hammer

2

Dariom grabbed her up off the floor as another guard shut down her computer, the loading sign already gone.

Good. It made it to the cloud. Now all she needed was to get the hell out of there somehow and expose this son of a b***h.

Dariom’s grip was much tighter than the previous guard’s, and no matter how much she struggled, no matter how much she tried to kick him in the balls again, she couldn’t manage to break free. “Stupid cunt.”

“Shrimp d**k!” she cut back. When he grimaced and shook her, she kept on. “Yeah, I felt it when I kneed you. f*****g tiny! I bet your wife cucks you!”

His open hand moved in a blur, and after smacking her, the world moved in a blur as well. Her legs gave out, but that didn’t stop Dariom from dragging her.

They entered one of the dig sites inside an old storehouse. Pit eighty-seven’s mouth opened wide for Charlie, and Dariom shoved her in.

She flew down the shaft and hit the wall on the other side before slapping the dirt at the bottom. Thankfully, even though it was a newer found pit, it was one of the oldest they’d found so far. The barbs and shafts that once lined the pit and its floor were gone, decayed with time.

Her vision sharpened with the pain of the fall. “You bastards!”

Dariom kicked dirt that coated her face, causing her to cough. “f**k you!”

He walked off, and Charlie slowly sat up, taking stock of each movement to make sure nothing was broken. She’d be bruised all right, but for now, she could move, which meant she could escape.

The base of the pit held specimen 1948. They’d only taken the head so far. A woman, or so they currently assumed, given bone sizes. The human body contained twenty-four ribs, though some of them were too small for her grand escape plan. The femurs and humerus would be best, but with only two of each, that wouldn’t get her very far.

Charlie’s fingers dug into the ground around the deceased. “Sorry, 1948. If it were the other way around, I’d want you to use me.”

With the bones hastily retrieved, and a few nails broken, she took off her shirt and tied it around her shoulder and rib to create a makeshift bag. Holding the bones at an angle, she broke them with her heel to get sharper edges before bagging them. Once she was ready, she studied the walls of the pit.

When the pit was created, it would have been smooth to make escape impossible, but decades of corrosion left some of the walls in worse condition. She needed the wall to have a little give so she could stick the bones in, but not too much that it would collapse under her weight. She found a path that was a little in between. She stuck two bones in for her first foot holds before sticking two more for her first handholds.

Come on, Charlie. You can do this!

HAMMER

These f*****g idiots.

Hammer shook his head as he stared at the dynamite meant to soften the ground for digging. It was just sitting there as if twelve inmates being held by the highest security shifter prison in the world wouldn’t use it. Ahh, I love idiots.

Hammer and the other inmates were being used as penal labor to build underground bunkers for the elite, which had Hammer scratching his head as to why they would allow inmates to have any hand in the safety of the elitist bastards who helped put them away, but that was a question for another day. The question for this day was, Should I use two or three sticks?

The explosion ripped through the half-made compound, throwing six of the guards back fifteen feet. They lived, writhing on the ground, their clothes and faces torn to shreds.

Should have gone with three.

At six-five, the other inmates easily followed his lead as they stormed out of the bunker, snatching up the downed guards’ guns. They traded fire with other guards, and Hammer ducked behind a supply truck.

He motioned two men to flank left and stay low, but their brows knotted in confusion, not understanding the hand signals, and simply returned fire. Even after all his time in prison, the gunfire took him back to his days as a mercenary, where men knew how to follow his commands. If they couldn’t work as a unit, then it was every man for himself. He hopped to his feet and sprayed lead as his own cover fire, working his way to the compound’s gate.

It would make things so much easier if he could just shift into his dragon form, torch all these little shits, and be done with it, but the chip in his neck prevented it. It didn’t prevent some of the advantages that came from being a shifter, though. When a bullet grazed his arm, the stinging, singed skin burned for a moment before his enhanced healing made him whole again.

A guard popped out from behind a truck, and Hammer ducked under the man’s first shot, his shifter speed also something the chip couldn’t inhibit. He smashed the guard in the face with the butt of his rifle, bones shattering and blood flying from the man’s nose, teeth, and eyes. He might live, or he might not. Hammer didn’t care, though he hadn’t used his full strength. The man surely would have been dead if that had been the case, and that would have made him a target for the others. Nothing like avenging your buddy to make you feel like a war hero.

He fired on the watchtower, causing the men to duck behind its metal shielding, allowing him free passage into the wilderness. The private bunkers were in remote locations, and this put Hammer at an advantage and disadvantage.

He knew how to survive in a wooded forest like the one he found himself dashing through. The babble of streams, the moss covering the fallen logs, and caves nestled into the mountains. It was his home. But this was not his home. At least, he was pretty sure it wasn’t. That was his biggest problem. While he could live in the forest for days or even weeks, he had no idea where this forest was in the world. Firs and hemlocks dominated the terrain, so he assumed they were in the northern half of the northern hemisphere, but damn, that was still a lot of places he could be.