When Arrows Fly by Emma Kraus

When Arrows Fly

by Emma Kraus

“Riley, wake up!” Logan screamed in my ear.

I jolted upright. It took a couple seconds for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight. Waking up in panic seemed to be a theme over the last two mornings. It was not something I wanted to get used to.

      “What’s going on?” I said breathlessly.

We were entering a small town with houses that looked like any amount of wind would blow the shingles right off of them. Logan’s hair was wet with sweat, and his eyes darted from window to window.

      “The Thalls are back,” he said tossing me my gun.

Thalls.  That’s what we called them, the pre-historic creatures my uncle was sending after us. It was easier than saying “Neanderthals”: that’s for sure. They kind of reminded me of Ninjas because of the all black attire they wore. We guessed my uncle dressed them like this so they would look like a SWAT team chasing after someone and not bald monkeys running around with bows and arrows. It was just a disguise so they wouldn’t look so foreign and scary to outsiders, outsiders meaning everyone except us. We were lucky their hands weren’t evolved enough to pull a trigger yet. It was already dangerous enough with stone head arrows flying around you. What a sight we were. An orange bus being chased by mad monkeys. This small town probably never even saw a police chase, never mind this. At first, people just stood and stared, but it wasn’t long before they started to have panicked looks on their faces. They had it easy. The Thalls weren’t after them. They were programmed to go after us, and only us. We didn’t know if the government officials had fled, or the Thalls had gotten them already. My family was the final item on my uncle’s “capture list.”

      Logan and I unbuckled ourselves from the bus we were traveling in to get a better view of our attackers. There were about eight of them running after us.

      Man, they are fast, I thought.

      “Duck!” My mom yelled from the front seat.

An arrow came whizzing through the back window and imbedded itself in the headrest in front of us. The Thalls were getting stronger. My dad pulled into the first parking lot he could. The bus squeaked to a halt beside a gas pump.

      “Why are we stopping?” Logan and I yelled in unison.

People all around the streets were now screaming and scurrying into stores and houses.

      “We need to get out of sight. Get out of the car and run. Find somewhere to hide!” my dad demanded.

      “Go!” my mom cried.

I grabbed my gun and booked it out of the car, running as fast as I could. After I ran a couple yards, I slowed up to look back to make sure my family was following. Before I had a chance to look behind me, something tackled me from behind. It was a Thall. I could tell by its hands. They were hairier than any man’s. I squirmed and wriggled trying to break free. It had a grip on my leg, the same leg that had been grazed with the arrowhead yesterday. The Thall stood over me as I lay on the ground flailing my arms. I couldn’t reach my gun, so I gave it a couple blows with my fist, not hard, but they did the job. It loosened his grip. I kicked and scratched my way out of its grasp as pain shot through my ankle. I spotted a door to one of the old houses as I struggled to my feet. Crashing noises were coming from behind me. I limped to the porch and climbed the stairs to the house.

      “Riley!” I heard a voice yell behind me as I busted into the front room. It was one of them, my mom, Dad or Logan. I couldn’t tell.

I turned. The Thall was coming up the stairs after me. I went to get my gun from my pocket. Nothing.

      It must have fallen out when I fell, I thought.

I heard grunting behind me. Before I could think, the Thall was lunging after me again. I dove in between the open door and the wall. I waited for a moment. This is where Logan would hide in our house when he wanted to scare me walking into my room. Suddenly, there was a thud and my mind snapped back to the present. I held my breath. I didn’t hear anything. I looked down. Only traces of the bandage were still attached to my leg from yesterday. My ankle was throbbing. I leaned over sidewise to see what had happened to the Thall. I saw a shadow. It was looking for me. Something large slammed me between the wall and the open door as it made its way into the house. I looked down and saw a foot. I would know that shoe anywhere. I jumped out of my hiding spot and threw myself toward him. My dad grabbed onto me and held me close.

      “Are you okay?” he asked in a concerned tone.

      “I twisted my ankle trying to get away from him,” I said as a tear started rolling down my face.

      “They’re gone now. Let’s get you back to the bus,” he said. That’s when I noticed a large scrape on his forehead. He saw me looking at it.

      “They sure got some sharp nails. Don’t they, Kiddo,” he said pointing to the wound. He almost laughed while he said it. I knew he was trying to distract me from my pain. No matter how bad things got, he could always put a smile on my face.

      “Where are Mom and Logan? Are they okay?” I asked. I didn’t see them as I looked around.

We made our way to the porch.

      “They’re fine, just a couple bumps and bruises,” he assured me, helping me down the stairs.

      “They’re back at the bus already.”

I wiped my eyes and nose with my sleeve. We walked along the sidewalk. He supported my left side as I hobbled back to the bus.

      “Dad, there’s no one here,” I said looking at the deserted town.

      “That’s what happens when arrows fly,” he said holding me tighter.

When Arrows Fly by Emma Kraus

In this polished excerpt, Emma Kraus’ main character, Riley, and her family find themselves being chased by creatures from the past. For their own safety, Riley and her twin brother, Logan, have to understand the minds of their pre-historic pursuers. The only way to stop the chase is to let the arrows fly.

When Arrows Fly

An Excerpt by Emma Kraus

“Ready to go?” my dad asked, as he checked his watch.

That watch had belonged to my great uncle, the one we no longer talk to, nor talk about. He was the one who was making us leave our home. The fear of thinking he is the only family we have left creates nightmares that even adults can’t sleep through.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm ready.”

I climbed into the old VW bus next to my brother as my dad locked the door to our house.

“You know,” my brother said, “we will never walk into that house again.”

“We might if this ends soon,” I said with hope.

“We won’t,” he said, sharply looking me in the eyes.

We have the same blue eyes, same brown hair, and the same face for that matter. I guess that’s what happens when you share the same womb.

I turned and looked out the window at the woods.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“Hey,” my dad yelled from the front. “Can one of you be in change of the GPS until your mother has a free hand?” She was braiding her hair.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“No, I’m older. I’ll take it,” Logan said grabbing it from my dad.

I just smiled and looked out the window. He always liked to play the “I’m The Older Twin Game.”

I put my ear buds in and hit “Shuffle.” I ended up skipping a bunch of songs until I found the one I was looking for. We pulled out of the driveway onto the small gravel road we had been down countless times.

My song started to fade as we turned onto Main Street. No one said a word. At least, I don’t think so. I couldn’t hear much over the upbeat song that had started playing. As we passed the fields of northern New York I saw the farmers bringing their cows in for the night. I leaned my head on the rough headrest and closed my eyes.

I woke to something sharp grazing my leg.

“Owwww. Oh, my God,” I cried. I grabbed my leg as my blood started to make an exit.

“Dad!” Logan yelled. “Pull over. An arrow got Riley!”

I winced in pain, and looked over to see a flint head sticking into the side of the bus across from me. My mother was now at my side. She rolled up my pants. 

“You all right?” asked my dad from the driver’s seat.

“I guess so,” I said in a whimper.

“Are you sure?” my mom asked while she wiped away the small streams that had trickled down my face.

I nodded and put a fake smile on for her.

I have a high pain tolerance, but this did make me accept the tissue my mother extended to me.

“Come on, Lisa,” said my dad. “We need to get out of here. Logan can bandage Riley up.”

My mother climbed back into the front, and we were moving again.

“Tell me if it’s too tight, and I’ll rewrap it,” Logan said giving me some pain medicine.

I grabbed the canteen next to me and washed it down. I hated taking pills. I almost gagged.

“Thanks,” I said after swallowing.

Logan nodded and buckled himself in.

“They’re definitely here,” said my dad. “They’re definitely here.”

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I must have dozed off for a while because the next time I looked out the window the clouds were deep red. It looked like someone had shot the sky with an arrow, like they had done to me. I moaned in pain and shifted my body to face Logan. He was asleep and so was my mother. She was passed out on the pull out bed in the bus. Her hair swirled around her pale face from the wind that came from the broken window. It looked like seaweed flowing in the ocean as the waves crashed over and over.

“Hey, Kid,” a voice said, from the front. “How’s the leg holding up?”

“Really sore,” I replied to my father. “It’s starting to bruise around the bandage.”

“It will hurt for a while, Riley,” he said.

“I can’t believe that arrow got through the window,” he said turning onto a highway marked 29 West. We passed a strip mall.

“They weren’t able to break through the glass last week,” I said looking at all the hit marks on the windows around me.

“So, what does that mean?” he asked. I could tell by his tone he already knew the answer.

It was silent besides the infrequent sounds of the motor.

“They’re evolving,” I said in a whisper.

“Yes,” he said running a hand through his hair. “Yes, they are.”

Every time we thought we were in control of them something new happened. The more sense my father had tried to talk into my uncle, the more out of control things got.

The feud started about three years ago. My father had been researching an archeological dig for work. He studies Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. The scientific name is too long for me to remember, so I just tell people that he studies really old dead people. Logan always reminded me that they weren’t “people” but neither of us really knew what they were.

My dad and uncle worked on the digs together. Their arrangement was perfect. My dad liked to be outdoors digging up the bones, whereas my uncle wanted to be working with the DNA in the dirt free environment of the laboratory. He and my dad spent a lot of time together.

Well, until that day my dad came home three hours late for dinner. He walked in the house silently.

My mom looked up from washing the dishes.

“Lisa,” my father said. “A moment in the other room, please.”

She wiped her hands dry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in a concerned tone.

He didn’t answer.

She followed him into the living room and shut the door behind her. Logan stood up next to me and closed his math book.

“Come on,” he said pulling on my arm.

“Stop it, Logan. I have homework to do,” I said, annoyed.

“Don’t you wanna know what’s wrong with Dad?” he asked.

We made eye contact, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. I jumped to my feet. We walked over and stood with our ears pressed against the door.

The conversation went like this:

“You know how Parker was trying to figure out how to make the solution and DNA work together?” said my dad.

“Yeah, I remember,” my mom replied.

“Well, he did,” my father said breathlessly. “There’s no way of stopping him. If I knew he was taking it this far, I would have tried to talk him out of it. I thought he was just doing an experiment.” My dad sounded helpless.

“He is modifying their brains.”

“Why?” my mother asked.

“Because Neanderthals have a more intellectual brain than humans do. They went extinct not because of being less skilled than the Homo-Sapiens, but from other causes. It just happened that the Homo-Sapiens evolved into humans and the Neanderthals died out. If they were still alive today they would outsmart any human.” my father spilled the words out.

Logan and I looked at each other, wide eyed.

It was silent after that.

That was the moment we found out what our uncle was really doing in the laboratory. He was trying to make a more intelligent human, trying to see what would have happened if the Neanderthals had survived instead of the Homo-Sapiens. That’s why we were here in the bus and not at home in our beds. It had gotten so far out of control that the only thing standing in the way of his evil plan was our lives.

We turned off of an exit and pulled into a abandoned gas station. The light from the moon shone on the broken windows of the store. Trees overlooked us instead of buildings. My dad cut the engine. We were still the only two awake in the bus.

“Can you make sure the windows are bolted down?” my dad asked.

I checked the back windows as he checked the front. They were all secure, except for the one the arrow had gotten through earlier. I set one of our moving boxes on the ledge to cover the hole.

“All set, dad.”

“Thanks,” he said as he set the car alarm.

The bus had a special sensor that would set off a beeping sound whenever something human sized or larger entered a thirty-foot radius around us. This gave us enough time to react to our unwanted visitors.

“Get some sleep, Riley. You need to be rested for tomorrow,” he said.

“Okay, ‘night, Dad,” I said and pulled a blanket over me. I closed my eyes.

I heard the squeak of the driver’s seat as he put it down to sleep.

“Goodnight, Riley.”

In spite of the possible threats around us, I fell asleep. The sounds of a nearby creek added harmony to my dreams.

About the Author

Sixteen-year-old Emma Kraus is in her tenth year of publishing the monthly “The Dog paper. Each month of the paper is represented by a different dog, and each issue contains fiction or travel pieces that Emma writes herself.

Though still in high school, Emma is taking some college courses and has definite plans to continue her writing.