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    Nipper
    Nipper
    Nipper
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Nipper

    By Barnaby Taylor

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Once a week the monsters come.
    They hunt all night.
    In the morning they’re gone.
    That gives me six days to get ready.
    Then they come back again.
    When the world is destroyed by a weekly attack of mysterious monsters, a young girl and her father are forced to fight for survival. Once her father has been seriously injured defending their house, the young girl must find a way to get them both to safety before the monsters return.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnaby Taylor
    Release dateFeb 26, 2019
    ISBN9781999633288
    Nipper
    Author

    Barnaby Taylor

    Inspired by his passion for films and video games, Barnaby Taylor loves writing dystopian science fiction and horror. He has recently written the VIRO series about a gang of teenagers struggling to survive in a world overrun by the infected. There are currently four books in the series. VIRO is rapidly infecting the Amazon charts and gaining rave reviews along the way. Here's one of the latest reviews:'The writing style is beautifully compelling, and after the first couple of pages I couldn't put it down. The author very skilfully creates a world and characters through deceptively simple prose that draws the reader right in. It is a fascinating blend of one-after-the-other edge-of-the seat scares, alongside a haunting narrative about what it is to be human.'

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      Book preview

      Nipper - Barnaby Taylor

      NIPPER

      NIPPER

      BOOK ONE

      Barnaby Taylor

      For Iris, as per usual and always …

      Copyright  Barnaby Taylor 2019

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      ISBN 978-1-9996332-8-8 (eBook)

      First Edition

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Barnaby Taylor

      www.falconboy.ie

      Once a week the monsters come.

      They hunt all night.

      In the morning they’re gone.

      That gives me six days to get ready.

      Then they come back again.

      Scream

      The first thing you hear is the scream. One of them starts and the rest join in. They get louder and louder. It sounds like the night is crying angry tears of pain.

      It. Is. Deafening.

      I hate the sound. My tummy feels sick when I hear it. I know what it means for me and Dad. I always put my hands over my ears but that never works.

      The monsters scream like they are dying. Like they are in the most pain that anyone could ever feel. It must be because they are monsters. It must be agony.

      But I don’t feel sorry for them.

      How could I? They are monsters.

      We are the only people left in our town. Everyone else is dead. They were killed by the monsters when they attacked for the first time.

      Me and Dad hid in the attic. The monsters were in our house. They looked everywhere. We kept very still. I heard them sniffing. We were lucky. They didn’t find us.

      In the morning they were gone.

      Dad went to look. They were definitely gone. But we stayed indoors for rest of the week. We didn’t know what else to do.

      We barricaded the doors and windows. We used all the wood we could find. We put chairs and tables against the front door. We blocked a window with the sofa.

      It was all we could do.

      I was so tense. I thought the monsters would come back at any minute.

      The nights were when we got really scared. We slept in the attic. The ladder was pulled up. I tried to sleep. Dad stayed awake. He was listening for them. We did this every night for six days.

      And then the monsters came back.

      We heard them outside. They were hunting for us. I hid in my sleeping bag. Dad was holding a kitchen knife. He was ready to stab the monsters. But they didn’t find us.

      In the morning they were gone again.

      House

      Our house looks deserted. All the windows are boarded up. We blocked the doors with planks of wood. That way, Dad said, no one will bother to try and get in.

      Except the monsters.

      I know they will never give up so I have to keep coming up with ways to help keep us safe. I always look out for bottles and jars. When I find one I smash it on the concrete path by the side of our house.

      The shards shine in the moonlight. I hear the monsters howl in pain as they tread on the broken bottles. When I come down in the morning there is monster blood everywhere.

      I want to make some bigger traps. I dream about huge metal spikes surrounding the house. They would be so sharp that any monsters who stepped on them would probably just die. But there’s no way I’ll ever get spikes like this so I’ll just have to keep dreaming.

      Whenever I find something sharp I stick it in the flower beds at the front of our house. Broken umbrellas are really good for this. You’d be amazed how easy they are to find. People just dump them everywhere. It’s easy to smash the curvy handles off. Then you can poke them into the mud. So far I have found forty three.

      The monsters get really tangled up. I don’t think it stops them completely but I hope it annoys them enough to stop standing there.

      I get in and out of my house by using a ladder I leave on the flat roof of the empty house next door. I unlock the front door with the key I found in the desk in the hall. I head up to the bathroom and climb out the window. I slide the ladder across the alley to the attic window and crawl across. I pull the ladder inside and climb in through the dormer window.

      All I have to do if I want to go out is do everything the same but just in reverse. I’m always careful in case someone or something see what I’m doing.

      Hurt

      The last time the monsters attacked us Dad got hurt really bad. He didn’t know how strong they were and thought he might be able to fight them. He had been a soldier before I was born and thought he was tough enough to fight. I begged him not to but he wanted to scare them away.

      ‘Let me try, Nipper. We can’t just hide here for the rest of our lives. I need to see what happens if we fight back.’

      ‘But they’re dangerous, Dad. We should hide until they’re gone.’

      ‘We have to know what we’re up against.’

      Dad spent the afternoon making a spear. He took a broom handle and taped two big kitchen knives to one end. The grey tape was very thick. Dad took some garden gloves and some magazines. He wrapped the magazines around his arms. I helped him by putting tape round them. He finished his armour with an old motorbike helmet. The visor was gone but the helmet covered his head.

      ‘How do

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