Sample: From Flood My heroine Aria, is a vet who's trying to find the location of a dog fighting ring.
Clariee
scowled at her. “If you cross that creek I’m going with you.”
Aria
gave up. She had tried reasoning with her mama before. When Clariee got
stubborn, even her father gave in without a fight. “Let’s go, then. Hurry.”
They
made it across Pigeon Creek just fine, but by the time they reached Aria’s house,
it was raining so heavily and the clouds were so black that it looked almost
dark. “The river’s up, but it still has a ways to go before it reaches the
house,” Aria yelled above the roaring of the water and the pounding of the
rain.
“Just
hurry,” Clariee begged. “This place feels dangerous right now.”
Once
they went inside, the feeling of danger receded. The power was still working,
and when the lights came on, everything looked familiar, safe, and cozy. Aria
found two towels and handed one to her mother. “We might as well dry off even
though in the long run it won’t matter much.”
“Lots
better,” Clariee approved as she dried her soaking hair.
Aria
went to the refrigerator and poured both of them a glass of orange juice. “Something
happened at the clinic right before you got there.”
“Oh?”
Aria
told her about the drowned dog and what her neighbor's son had heard. “I think that’s where they hold the fights, and
at least one of them keeps his dogs there.”
Horror
darkened her mother’s eyes. Clariee loved animals. “You said the dead dog was
on a chain?”
Aria
nodded.
“How
do you think he got away?”
“I
don’t know.”
Clariee’s eyes looked sick now. “If one dog
was left chained to die, the others probably are too.”
Aria’s
stomach churned. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Clariee
set her orange juice down with a thump and tossed her towel into the kitchen sink. “We have
to find them, Aria. We have to make sure they’re safe.”
Aria
peeked out the window. It was still raining. “We’ll have to go by land if we go
at all. We can’t take a boat on the river. The current is so swift it would be
suicide.”
“Then
we’ll go by land.”
Aria
scrambled to find two big flashlights, a coil of rope, and a scalpel. At the
last minute she picked up a grappling iron that the river had washed up two days ago. “What else do we need, Mama?”
“Something
to cut a big chain.”
Aria
ground her teeth. “I don’t have anything like that. I don't even have a sharp knife. I’m taking a scalpel so I
can cut through their collars if I have to. They’re probably made of leather.
The dog my neighbor brought in had on a leather collar.”
The
lights flickered and went out. “Hurry,” Clariee begged.
The
minute Aria opened the door she saw that things had gotten a lot worse. The
rain was falling almost horizontally as the wind screamed and blew. “The
water’s almost to the steps now,” she cried as she ducked her head against the
fury of the storm.
Rascal here. Obviously, nothing I said has persuaded my mama to stop teaching school. She even dropped the small human off at daycare! I suppose I can always go back to bed after she tells me goodbye every day, and I do have my sister Sasha to play with. As long as Mama doesn't neglect my morning sandwich again I will endure this hardship until summer rolls back around, and we can set our own schedule.
Picture of the flood: By Walter Siegmund (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Very intense! I hope they rescue the dogs. Thanks for sharing...and here's MY SWEET SATURDAY SAMPLE
ReplyDeleteI hope they both make it through the storm okay. Great scene.
ReplyDeleteI hope they make it there safely and can rescue the dogs!
ReplyDelete