Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass)

by Marlow, Shaye

  Maybe they think it is, Sunny thought, delighted. Gotta love dumb savages.

  Once she was sure the spear-chuckers weren’t coming back, she went an extra few hundred feet through thick woods, until she was sure she couldn’t be spotted from the road, and started another fire. Because, damn it, it was late, and sleeping in the woods in Alaska at night without a fire would get a person eaten alive by bugs. Besides, she thought, as she curled up to sleep, it was almost dark, she was in a depression on top of a rise, and there was no way anyone would be able to see her smoke or flames.

  Sometime in the early morning, she woke with a start.

  “You came.”

  An elderly native man was sitting beside the fire nearby, watching her. He didn’t appear to be armed, wearing nothing except for a T-shirt, jeans, and a silver braid hanging down over his shoulder. He looked caught between excitement and trepidation. “Though it would’ve been easier if you’d just gone straight to the village and asked for me. Now they’re thinking you’re a witch.”

  The savages had found her again. Sunny sat up slowly, trying not to panic. “Holy crap, it was a bear!” She pointed behind him.

  The elderly man didn’t look. “That won’t work on me.” If anything, he seemed…amused ? “Jasmine and Heather told me what you did to them.”

  “What I did to them?” Sunny demanded, butthurt. “They attacked me, old man.”

  “The name’s Tadzi. Though…” the elderly native looked perplexed. “I thought you were untrained. How did you manage to steal their memories like that?”

  Powerful, spontaneous anger bubbled up from within. “If I knew that, I’d be able to stop it, wouldn’t I?” Sunny snapped.

  He cocked his head as if she’d said something interesting. “You’ve said that before. This has something to do with that girl in the ambulance?”

  That…girl in the ambulance ? Sunny felt her heart give a startled hammer as she remembered those final moments before the crash.

  The forest around her started to shift, growing brighter, the surgical lights of a medical—

  “Now hold on!” Tadzi cried, jumping up and making a cutting motion with his hand. The light immediately swiped away, the forest returning to its normal dim early-morning light. “Don’t go back there—we’re actually getting somewhere today. How about you come to the village and we’ll talk?”

  “What village?”

  He frowned. “Eklutna.” Cocking his head, he said, “Isn’t that why you came out here?”

  “I was fighting a tentacle monster.” Sunny was still trying to puzzle out what had happened to the forest around them. “Was that an ambulance?” She’d recognize that interior anywhere.

  The elderly man immediately seemed to deflate. “You mean you weren’t looking for me?”

  “I was road-hauling an octopus down C Street with my truck and it dragged me into the sewer. Next thing I know, I’m drowning in Thunderbird Falls.”

  Tadzi gave her a very long, very careful look. “You accidentally arrived on the wrong side of the Eklutna Wall, where I happen to be, and you have no idea how it happened.”

  “Yeah,” Sunny said. “And now I need to get home before that thing goes after my family.”

  Tadzi continued to give her that considering look. “What thing?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Sunny said, with growing frustration. “It’s like a giant octopus. It pretends to be a person and likes making people miserable—I think so they’ll kill themselves.”

  He seemed to take that in stride. “And you need this creature dead before you will be willing to train with me?”

  Train with him? “Uh…yeah, I guess…”

  He nodded. “All right.” As if he was willing to help her. “How big is it? Two, three feet?”

  “Leg to leg?” Sunny asked. At his nod, she shrugged. “Forty?”

  Tadzi’s eyes went wide. “Náakw.” It was both a curse and a gasp.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, with a little spark of hope. “You recognize it?”

  “We call it Náakw,” he confirmed. “The South American shamans have fought this creature,” he said, looking pale. “It’s not good. Not good. Many died.”

  “That’s great. How do you kill it?”

  “You don’t!” he cried. “Náakw.” He pronounced it like he was tasting soap. “You stay away. It’s what you would call a god.”

  Sunny laughed. “Bullshit. That pinch-faced weasely little shit isn’t a god. I’m gonna find a way to kill it.”

  “No, you need to leave it alone,” Tadzi said. “Nobody survives a Náakw. He feeds on human misery and hides in pockets between worlds. He lived with the Maya before the white man, demanding sacrifice.”

  “Didn’t the Maya civilization collapse?”

  The old native blinked. “Yes, but you can’t—”

  “It’s killing people. It’s giving my nephew nightmares. It dies.”

  “But you can’t—”

  Sunny felt the world around her squeeze suddenly, and sensed the arrival of more presences. Seven of them, to be exact. They filtered from the woods like ghosts, seven old native men, each giving her and Tadzi critical looks. “Since you insist on meeting with this white girl despite our disapproval,” they said, “we have decided upon her rite of initiation. If she kills the Náakw, you may train her. Until then, you are not allowed to speak to her again. The Council has decided.”

  Tadzi’s mouth hung open. “Oh no.”

  A moment later, Tadzi was yanked away, leaving only the seven old men at the fire with Sunny. They looked her over with intense disdain.

  “Tadzi is powerful as an individual, but he has not yet learned the power of the group,” the closest old native man said. “And the group does not approve of this union.” He looked Sunny up and down. He wore suspenders and plaid, and his eyes were glowing an eerie white. Seemingly coming to a decision, he said, “Get up. We will walk you to the tunnel back to the Domes.” It wasn’t a question, and Sunny found herself getting to her feet automatically.

  Ahead of her, the one in suspenders started to walk. Sunny found herself compelled to walk with him, and when she looked, her wrists were bound together. Further, her legs, despite her attempts to guide them, fell rigidly into place with each step and stayed there, immobile. “Hey,” she began, “why can’t I—”

  “Keep walking,” the one in suspenders bit out. “We’re not here to chat with a white girl.” Indeed, the seven old men were ominously silent as they walked around her.

  Feeling uncomfortable, Sunny said, “Where are we—”

  “Shhh !”

  About forty minutes of silence trudging through the woods and up the abandoned highway later, they stopped in a thicket of alder trees. One of the old men knelt down and pulled a layer of leaves aside, revealing a square hatch set into the ground. “Here,” he said, standing. “Take this to get home.” One of them brushed his hand against her wrists. Before he untied her, however, he waited until she looked him in the eyes.

  The man was angry. “He’s the last pure line. He needs to be with one of the people…not making half-breeds with a white girl.”

  It took her a moment to make the connection. When it did, she cringed.

  They think I’m going to pull a Daphne with an old fart… She immediately reeled back in revulsion. “He’s like seventy,” Sunny cried, remembering Tadzi’s wrinkled face. “Eww!”

  The old men didn’t seem swayed by that. “Stay away from him,” the suspender-wearing one growled. “Shamans belong to the people, not to love. Especially young shamans. A wife will be provided to him. One who is compatible .”

  That didn’t make any goddamn sense at all. “Uh…good for him?”

  The suspender-wearing native man held her gaze a bit longer, then shook his head and the bonds dispersed like smoke. Then the seven of them stood there watching her, glowering with contempt.

  “Well?” one of them grated. “Go.” He shoved Sunny towards the door.

>   Chapter 10: Getting Out

  Sunny jolted awake as her body tumbled forward. It was late morning and she was standing upright in an alder thicket, looking down at an unobtrusive layer of leaves.

  Had she been sleepwalking ?

  Sunny stepped forward and turned to get a better look at where she was. Her foot hit something harder than the usual forest detritus under the leaves and she hesitated, remembering the dream filled with grumpy old men. On a wild hunch, she crouched and started brushing at the leaves with a hand.

  A hatch appeared underneath her, hidden by the mulch. Sunny’s heart started to pound. Then…did that make the rest of the dream real, too?

  Stay away from him , she remembered the old man saying…about another old man? Weird. It was probably just her starved sex drive subconsciously making its displeasure known—she hadn’t had anything but a couple random flings in three years, and both times, the guys had been too drunk to notice they kept forgetting what they were doing. Definitely nothing worth remembering.

  “Weird,” she whispered. She carefully pulled the hatch open and looked inside. The interior was deep, either a hallway to a bunker or a much longer tunnel.

  Here’s to nothing…

  Sunny lowered herself into the darkened interior, which proved to be a tunnel.

  The tunnel—which looked like it was some sort of old road culvert or water main—was dank and dark, and Sunny had to guide herself with a hand on the cold, insect-riddled metal because she couldn’t see her palm in front of her face.

  After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Sunny vaguely made out a light through the silhouettes of unidentified clinging insects, mold, and roots dropping from the walls and ceiling in front of her. She hurried her pace.

  The tunnel came out under a wall of tropical plants, its opening completely hidden by the dense foliage. Carefully, Sunny crawled into the humid heat of the Chugiak Dome and looked around. She found herself in a ‘wild’ area on the edge of a park, complete with manicured lawns and blooming jasmine and plumerias.

  She crawled out of the overgrown foliage and headed across the manicured lawns, ignoring the strange looks she got from a couple sunbathing on a towel.

  “How you doing?” Sunny asked, approaching them. “Mind if I use your cell phone?”

  The two glanced at each other like they thought Sunny was about to rob them.

  “I don’t have a cell phone,” the man—who was too wealthy not to have a cell phone—said.

  Sunny reached into his open backpack and took it.

  “I’m calling the police!” the man cried as he jumped to his feet. His girlfriend had already started backing away.

  “Yeah, you do that,” Sunny said, giving him her biggest, most cannibalistic grin. “I’ll just eat them too.”

  She watched the word ‘eat’ cross the man’s face and he, too, started backing away.

  Sunny lunged and hissed at him, and he scrambled and spun to get out of range…then stumbled to a slow halt. While he was standing there, dazed, Sunny walked off a few paces and called Daphne. She watched the man meander back to his towel as she waited for her sister to pick up.

  Daphne sounded harried, as usual. Something about six kids and pregnant all the time… “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Hey, it’s Sunny. I’m in Chugiak. I need a lift back to North Anchorage, like, stat.”

  Daphne groaned. “Sunny, the last time you called and had me drop everything to come pick you up, you weren’t there, and you didn’t even call.”

  “I was abducted !” Sunny snapped.

  “Again?” Sunny could tell her sister was starting to think maybe her father was onto something when he quietly derided Sunny as a lying lowlife ‘prone to fanciful, high-flying tales to relieve her of any guilt or responsibility for her actions.’

  Sunny felt her hand tightening on the phone. “Whatever happened to ‘just call when you need something, sis’?” Sunny bit out. “Remember that?”

  “Yeah,” Daphne said reluctantly, “but…”

  “Well I’m calling and I need something.”

  “You’re asking me to be gone three hours on a school day. I leave now, the kids are gonna come home to an empty house.”

  “Jake and Thomas get home first and can watch them.”

  “Jake needs tutoring for his Calculus homework. If I leave, he won’t go and he’ll just watch TV instead.”

  That didn’t sound like Jake. “Excuse me?”

  “He wants to do anything but homework,” Daphne insisted. “I think he was too young for these advanced placement classes. The guidance counsellors screwed up royally letting him take them.”

  “Jake’s the smartest kid I know,” Sunny said. “Why would he be avoiding his homework?” Then she frowned a little. “You didn’t let him go back to school, did you?”

  Daphne sounded a little uncomfortable. “Look, Sunny, I couldn’t keep him home with no doctor’s note. He would’ve gotten booted from the school for truancy…”

  It was a weak excuse, and it took Sunny a moment to realize why. “Gary said something, didn’t he?”

  Daphne’s silence said it all. Gary—straight-laced, narrow-minded, supersperm Gary—didn’t believe in such things as giant bats and tentacle monsters. He’d actually sided with the government ‘investigators’ when the retired special ops guy taking out the ‘sick bear’ with a chainsaw had come up at the last family dinner. Him and Dad both…

  “Dammit, Daphne, he’s a serial killer !”

  “Yeah, but he’s not killing kids , is he? Jake needs that grade…”

  “That’s exactly who he’s killing!” Sunny snapped. “And I figured it out, so he tried to kill me!”

  Daphne gasped. “Well you could’ve said something!”

  “Why, so you could tell your pet cop and he could go be a hero again?” Sunny was still miffed about the time she had called her sister to tell her that a guy in rags was doing a really awesome streetside percussion performance using old pipes and plastic buckets, and she should come see it with some spare change. Instead, it had been Gary who showed up a few minutes later, confiscated the man’s homemade instruments, and hauled him off to jail, despite the protests by the observers who had been laughing and taking pictures at the musician’s antics.

  “Is this about that bucket guy again?” Daphne demanded. “That bucket guy was loitering.”

  “That bucket guy was giving a hundred people a great time with his music!” Sunny snapped.

  “Panhandling is illegal in the Domes,” Daphne insisted stubbornly. “If we let one person do it, they all wanna do it. The government has to set boundaries and the DP has to enforce them.”

  Sunny closed her eyes and gritted her teeth to keep from yelling at her sister. “You know what? I’ll just take the public rail.”

  “It’ll be faster, anyway,” Daphne said, her voice also hardening. “I don’t have time to load all the kids in the floater.”

  Remembering how much fun they’d had with each other going backpacking or camping or canoeing, always at the drop of a hat, Sunny felt a muscle in her neck twitch. “Grow some balls and tell Gary you’re not letting Jake in that guy’s class again until I can figure out how to catch him,” Sunny said.

  “Sunny, when you said you were finding a way to take him down, I didn’t really think you were going to spend the next week watching him—doesn’t seem your style. Why don’t you just bop him over the head and dig a ditch outdome somewhere and bury him alive?”

  “Is Gary nearby?” Sunny gritted, knowing that Mr. Straightlaced wouldn’t appreciate a conversation about premeditated murder.

  “He’s out golfing,” Daphne said dismissively. “Come to think of it, you would make an excellent criminal, wouldn’t you?”

  Sunny grimaced, thinking of the stolen EpiPen and the antihistamines. “Probably.”

  “Sunny ,” Daphne barked out, horror thick in her tone. “I know that tone. What did you do?!”

  “Nothing.”

/>   “You stole something, didn’t you?!” Daphne gasped. “Holy shit, Sunny .” She sounded like Sunny had murdered a nun.

  Sunny cringed at the judgment in her sister’s tone. “Look, it wasn’t anything that I didn’t need.”

  “Mom would have a stroke .”

  “Yeah, well, Mom’s not doing manual labor every day and fighting a tentacle monster in her spare time.”

  There was a long pause. Then, “What?”

  “Dortez,” Sunny said, sighing. “He’s a tentacle monster.”

  “As in a Japanese hentai tentacle monster?”

  “No. Like a gigantic octopus forty feet wide, all wadded up inside Jake’s math teacher.”

  “Like a Japanese hentai tentacle monster?”

  “I’m not joking, Daphne.”

  There was another long pause as Daphne digested that. Then, “Is this like that giant bats thing from a couple years ago? Or the retired special ops guy with the chainsaw?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sunny said. “Just come get me, okay? I’m at the north side of the Mirror Lake park. I’ll tell you the rest on the way back to Anchorage to pick up Bertha.” If she was still there. More likely, she was now in an impound lot, with a tow fee of a few hundred dollars.

  She hesitated. “You need a chainsaw? I heard that guy took that monster on his lawn out with a chainsaw.”

  Sunny considered. “You got one?”

  Daphne laughed. “Are you kidding? I live in the Dome…why would I need a chainsaw?”

  “Well, then why’d you offer?”

  “I didn’t offer—I was suggesting you go legally purchase a chainsaw to take this thing on.”

  “I don’t have any money!” Sunny snapped.

  Daphne made a disgusted sound. “I’ll be there in two hours.”

  “Thanks, sis.”

  Daphne grunted, then hung up.

  Sunny walked the phone back over to the couple lying on the beach towel. They gave her a suspicious look like they thought she was going to rob them