Separation Read Online Free PDF Page B

couples, they had no surveillance equipment
installed. They preferred to keep a low profile, as low as possible
under the circumstances. Both of them felt with added security, it
would be a matter of time before some nut came around to test
them.
    In any case, no one other than the human
variety of life had come around... until now. Harry crept quietly
along the forest floor, picking his way here and there, smelling
and listening for anything other than human or cat. His sense of
smell wasn’t as finely developed as Anastasia’s was, but he could
still discern a number of different odors at the same time.
    To his right, he caught the scent of five
rabbits out foraging for a late night snack, and beyond them, he
heard the rustle of an owl’s wings as it sought its evening’s prey.
He heard a squeak which abruptly cut off. Field mouse, he thought.
Bad luck for you... but a good evening’s meal for Mr. Owl. He
continued listening, every nerve ending on edge, waiting...
    Something leaped out at him. He only got a
brief glimpse of something short, squat, and with heavy legs. It
jumped him from his side and knocked him down, its fangs gnashing
and its claws going for his face. “Kill you, kill you!”
    Not a very friendly first meeting, thought
Harry as he replied with a smash to the thing’s face. It continued
to attack and succeeded in slashing his right forearm. Blood
spurted out, and Harry, emitting a bellow of rage, slammed the palm
of his left hand against the thing’s face. Rolling aside, he got to
his feet, his claws out, ready and waiting.
    “Kill you!”
    Not friendly at all, and although the thing
kept slashing at him, Harry, being the quicker of the two, shucked
and jived and managed to stay out of arm’s reach while darting in
occasionally to land a few blows to his opponent’s face and
body.
    “Kill you, kill you,” the other animal-person
repeated in hoarse grunts. Its vocabulary consisted of only two
words, but it obviously had some intelligence as it backed off,
shaking its head and pawing the dirt.
    Getting a good look at it, Harry saw a
combination of a warthog and a man—brown fur, elongated nose and
piggy eyes, but no tusks. Instead, this thing walked like a man on
oversized feet and also had extremely long claws, perhaps five
inches in length. It was immensely strong, but also slow. “Who sent
you?”
    This time, the other creature didn’t offer
its usual two-word reply. Instead, it leaped forward, arms
extended, which left its throat vulnerable. Harry judged the
thing’s leap, stepped aside with a millisecond to spare, and let
fly a slash that tore its throat out. It collapsed in a heap.
    No time to celebrate, as the sound of another
struggle took place off to his left. “Anastasia...”
    Wasting no time, he ran over to the source of
the sound and heard his wife saying, “Hey, don’t struggle, I won’t
hurt you.”
    Arriving at the scene, he found Anastasia
holding onto a rotund little man. Short people weren’t uncommon,
but this man was far from common.
    At the height of barely five feet, he
resembled a mole more than anything else, with a tiny twitching
nose and even tinier eyes, oversized and powerful looking hands
used most presumably for digging, and a gray, furry body. He
squinted up at Anastasia, made a faint squealing noise, and fell
silent.
    “Are you okay?” she asked. “Your face and arm
are bleeding.”
    Panting, he acknowledged her question with a
nod. “I had a run-in with a warthog. He’s... history. I’ll
heal.”
    She started toward him, but he waved her off
and took a good look at their captive, clad in stained and torn
blue overalls. The smell of pasta and oil was unmistakable. “If
you’re a refugee from a pasta factory,” he said to the visitor,
“then I’m going to be really disappointed.”
    “It is my last meal,” the mole-man replied in
a thick Italian accent. While his English wasn’t perfect, he made
enough sense for Harry to understand. “I go