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No Country for the Tide

adventure◐ Mature
5 contributors · 4 paragraphs deep

Halloran reached the church, but someone had beaten him to it. Fresh dig marks scarred the mud, and a lantern still burned by a half-open hole. A woman stood over it, pistol raised, eyes wild. "You're forty years too late," she said. "And I'm not sharing."

Halloran lunged for her gun. They grappled in the mud, the pistol firing once into the sky. He wrenched it free and stood, breathing hard, the weapon now in his hand. The woman laughed from the ground. "You don't even know what you just won," she said, nodding at the open hole.

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Halloran looked into the open hole. At the bottom lay a sealed iron door, and pressed against it from the inside was a pale handprint, far too large to be human. The woman was still laughing. He backed away, gun lowered, and ran for the dinghy as the tide rushed in. Some prizes you win by leaving them buried.

RC
Rafael Cruz
4 votes · future 1 of 1