A Different Kind of Animal

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

People were everywhere—entering and leaving the stores, pushing big metal carts on wheels, and walking to and from the many vehicles parked in the lot. The only people Leonardo had ever known were the scientists at the lab, but none of these people seemed in the least bit threatening like they were. 

A small group of men all wearing the same maroon-colored shirt huddled outside the double doors to the store on Leonardo’s right. He figured they must work there. Two of the four were smoking cigarettes, and all of them were talking loudly about their “crappy” work day. 

The disgusting, suffocating smell of the tobacco smoke wafted into the narrow alley that he was carefully peering out from, almost causing him to retch when he knew that drawing attention to himself was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead, eyes watering, he retreated to the back of the alley where a Dumpster blocked off the other end to the small gravel road behind the buildings. 

His entire body remained taut with anxiety as he prepared to be discovered at any moment by some wandering person or, in the worst case scenario, by them. So he made a plan to leap onto the top of the Dumpster and dash away if he were cornered. Crouching down beside a heaping trashcan, he made his form as small as possible so that anyone glancing in from the lot wouldn’t spot him.

But he couldn’t stand not trying to absorb every new sight and smell around him. He lifted his head just high enough to watch the people outside the mouth of the alley. He heard the cheerful sounds of children laughing and saw them running away from their parents, and he even heard children singing. He was captivated and wished that he could remember more of his own childhood, no matter what horrors he’d been forced to live through. Outside of books, he’d only ever seen adults in all his life.

Suddenly, a rusty door on the other side of the trashcan burst open, flooding the alley with artificial light. Falling back against the wall, blinking against the glare, Leo could hardly breathe as he watched the looming shadow on the opposite wall move within the doorway, carrying some kind of hulking object in his left hand. 

Leo smelled the sour sweat of a man. The guy grunted as he shifted what was now obviously a large garbage bag to his other hand and bumbled out into the alley, crossing directly in front of Leo’s crouched body. The man was obese and perspiring heavily, and his face was stubbly with a sparse beard. When he swung the bag into the gaping mouth of the Dumpster, he caused the heavy hinged lid to fall into place after it. That was okay; it’d make it easier to get away.

Leo sat so still that, for a moment, he didn’t think the man would even notice him. But when the guy turned around to walk back inside, he froze in the step that he’d been about to make, his eyes wide as he stared at Leo in blatant surprise.

After a moment of shocked silence passed between the two of them, the guy, whom Leo could now see was only a few years older than himself, asked, “Um…Can I help you?”

The words didn’t register. 

Leo’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he feared it would burst. His eyes went wide, and his muscles were so tense that his body began to ache and tremble with the adrenaline that was now surging through his veins.

Panicked, his entire body screamed, RUN!

Before he thought about what he was going to do, he leapt to his feet in one fluid movement, pulled back his lips to bare long, pointed canines, and sprung for the Dumpster. He was up on top of it and leaping out into the gravel road so quickly that he barely heard the startled cry of the young man behind him.