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    Gladys the Guard Episode One: Gladys the Guard, #1
    Gladys the Guard Episode One: Gladys the Guard, #1
    Gladys the Guard Episode One: Gladys the Guard, #1
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    Gladys the Guard Episode One: Gladys the Guard, #1

    By Odette C. Bell

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    About this ebook

    Gladys is a mild-mannered girl, living in a mild-mannered town.

    Working in a local haberdashery store, she stacks pastel-colored yarns and sticks labels on jam jars. She's single, carless, and lives with her mad grandma. The only interesting thing about her is also the saddest: Gladys is unusually good at arcade games.

    But when strange, yowling, terribly violent things happen in town, Gladys soon finds out she might be the only haberdashery store attendant who can stop them, and that, luckily for everyone else, her skills with plastic guns extend to the real variety.

    ....

    Gladys the Guard follows a gaming geek and a hunky soldier fighting to save a sleepy town from mysterious creatures. If you love your contemporary fantasies with punchy action, plenty of wit, and a splash of romance, grab Gladys the Guard Episode One today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOdette C. Bell
    Release dateJan 17, 2017
    ISBN9781386388937
    Gladys the Guard Episode One: Gladys the Guard, #1

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      Book preview

      Gladys the Guard Episode One - Odette C. Bell

      1

      Gladys sneered. She redoubled her grip on her gun, pressing herself further into the unyielding, wooden wall behind her.

      Great, this was just great. Not only was this bloody building soon to be full of fiends of the underworld, but she wasn’t alone either.

      She wasn’t talking about the horde of zombie-esque lords of death that were winding their shadowy way toward this rundown farmhouse. No. They couldn’t technically be classed as company. Rather, the heavily armed incursion team that was very noisily making their way through the front door was definitely company. But they were very unwelcome. The little situation developing here – a very dangerous, very terrifying situation – was just about to hit boiling point. And five heavily armed, steel-capped scouts would be the match to the gas-filled oven.

      Gladys heard the silent patter of feet behind her. She heard the silent patter because she could feel it reverberating down each of her vertebrae. She twisted on the spot. Dropping to her feet and punching the gun to the left, she fired off two shots in one smooth move. The familiar hush of sand cascaded into a pile on the floor.

      Oh, this was even better. Now those machine-gun-toting ballerinas would know she was here. She could see them in her mind’s eye, frozen on the stairs waving their hands about in a silent holy crap, boys, we are not alone sort of way.

      Now what was she going to do? She could have played the innocent little who me? game if they’d caught her. Oh, hi there, I just wandered into this deserted farmhouse in the middle of a military training ground… yeah, I was looking for the bathroom… got a bit lost… no, I can’t read signs….

      That clever plan could no longer work. They would see straight through it and to the shiny gun in her hand. Whoopee, now she had to think of something else.

      Gladys put one finger to her chapped lips and let the other hand drop to her waist, the firm butt of the gun brushing lightly against her worn cargo pants. Practiced footfall avoided the creaks in the wooden stairs, the almost imperceptible shake in the floor beneath her the only indication she had that her new visitors were moving up.

      This room was blocked off, with no windows and only one door that led out onto the landing beyond. That’s why she’d picked it – only one entry… only one entry?

      She turned quickly to survey the rest of the room. She hadn’t been thinking clearly. How the hell had that Sand Jackal found its way in here? She’d been guarding the door, and no seven-foot gray shadow of a man with the head of a jackal had slipped past her.

      Righty-oh. Gladys parted her lips to form the words, careful not to give her exact position away with a flippant one-liner.

      There was a hole in the ceiling that led to the rafters, rat-eaten insulation, and wiring of this decrepit house. Gladys stared at it. She really shouldn’t have missed that. So what if she’d had other things to think of? If she wanted to stay alive in this game, she had to play with her eyes wide open.

      This did, however, present an opportunity. She knew the incursion team was seconds from bursting in on her – time to get rid of the gun.

      She took one quick stride into the middle of the room and, clipping the safety on the gun, threw it up into the small opening above her. It landed with a dull thud above.

      She quickly threw herself against the far wall in direct sight of the door.

      She watched it open as she dropped to her feet and huddled against the wall.

      Stay where you are. Five guns pointed at her.

      They’d filed into the room in classic action-movie style: two crouching by the door as the others followed the leader in. It was a small room, though. She hoped they’d appreciate how cramped they’d made it.

      Lie down on the floor, hands behind your head.

      Sheesh, did they really have to shout so loudly? She was right here, for crying out loud! Gladys slowly uncurled herself and went to lie on the dusty floor.

      Hold on, said the soldier in the lead.

      Captain? asked Mr. Shouty McShouty.

      Gladys? the Captain’s voice, though strong and determined, wavered slightly.

      She knew that clipped Scottish brogue. How could she possibly not know it?

      She lifted her head slowly and looked up at the hulk in shades of navy blue and black above her.

      Max? she responded, her voice shaking with the smallest hint of amusement. This was totally ridiculous.

      What are you doing here? His question was a command, a snapped demand for her to explain very quickly how she had found herself in such a very compromising situation.

      Gladys ground her teeth, maintaining eye contact – or goggle contact, at least – with the heavily armored bulk of Captain Max Angus Cook. She knew better than to get up; Max may know her, but the very angry and confused soldiers beside him would be happy to shoot and ask questions later.

      Well… she managed, blowing a thick cloud of dust off the ancient timber floor with every breath. You’re not going to believe— she paused.

      Yes? he prompted.

      But Gladys wasn’t listening. Her eyes widened slightly, her brow furrowed, and her arms and legs tensed. There was something moving above her – and no, it wasn’t a rat or a rowdy cockroach.

      A little cloud of dust fell from the attic opening in the ceiling. She watched, almost in still frame, as Max slowly lifted his head and looked up.

      Gladys blinked once then quickly rolled to the side as a huge, sinewy guard of the underworld flung itself from the rafters above. A giant, gold scimitar sliced into the floor where she’d been lying. The wave from the sudden action blew her tangled, dull brown fringe into her eyes as she walked her feet quickly up the wall in front of her, using the traction to push herself into a backward roll and onto her feet.

      The three soldiers in the room had all taken a collective step back at the sight of a 7ft giant dog-headed man jumping from the ceiling.

      What the hell? Mr. Shouty McShouty offered.

      These highly trained men may have been prepared for anything – but they weren’t prepared for a dusty Sand Jackal of underworld doom. In fact, the tensed, obviously frightened stances of their bodies – their guns raised in automatic freak-out – would’ve made her laugh if she’d had a gun herself. To their credit, though, barely a moment passed before they composed themselves, but that was all the Sand Jackal needed.

      Gladys pivoted on the ball of her foot and faced the beast, which was now between her and the wall. The soldiers behind her wouldn’t shoot… well, she hoped they wouldn’t shoot. So it was up to her to bring this one down.

      She watched and waited as the thing grabbed the scimitar, which it had driven deep into the floor, one contraction of its long arm muscles plucking it up with ease. It lunged at her, the glint of gold held at head height. Gladys brought an arm up to meet the hilt of the blade clutched tight in the beast’s viselike grip. She pivoted again, dropping quickly and curling her back. The momentum of the monster brought it over her, and she sharply kicked up with both legs, landing a hard blow to its stomach and catapulting it behind her.

      If Gladys had been wearing a tiny slit dress and a studded collar with her hair in two side buns, she could have put Street Fighter to shame. Though she doubted whether she could do a handstand on the spot and twist-kick her assailant repeatedly, a little judo flip was still pretty impressive against a creature not even H. P. Lovecraft could have imagined.

      As she jumped back to her feet, she noticed with half an eye that she had accidentally hurled her assailant into the equally foreboding form of Mr. Shouty McShouty. The two lay sprawled near the far wall, a tangle of gray and black.

      Gladys seized the opportunity and seized a gun. The force of a giant muscle-bound dog of death slamming into him had separated Mr. Shouty from his assault rifle. The other soldiers, though they were now coming to terms with the situation, would not risk shooting at the creature when their comrade lay firmly entangled in its bulk. She didn’t have the same qualms.

      She could see Max finally catch up to the situation. To be fair, it was a pretty odd situation. Someone he held to be a very pathetic, weak, total geek had just thrown the hulking form of a mythical creature across the room and was now going to shoot its monstrous form for good measure. It must be quite challenging for him, Gladys reasoned, as she darted clear out of his reach.

      She aimed the gun at the creature’s chest as it quickly untangled itself and rose to its feet. Perfect chance, she squeezed off two rounds….

      Except nothing happened. The gun did not fire.

      Gladys’ face snapped to a deathly white. This was not supposed to happen. She was not prepared for any countermove. She was too close to use the creature’s momentum against it. She didn’t even have time to squeeze her eyes shut.

      Someone slammed into her back, knocking her out of the creature’s path and heavily to the wooden floor below. She felt the person twist around and fire off two quick, sharp shots. A waterfall of sand exploded over her back.

      Near-fatal situation averted… almost. Now she was going to have to explain herself to Captain Max Angus Cook.

      …

      Several months earlier

      Gladys pushed her glasses further up her nose as she idly shot at the zombies with the gun in her other hand. This was a very cool move – she would have looked very swanky indeed if it weren’t for the fact she was a short, stumpy 23-year-old in her moccasins, threadbare t-shirt, and trackie dacks, standing in an arcade full of weedy teenagers. Yeah, check her out – hell, she could even twist the gun around in her grip and blow the smoke away… well, she could if it wasn’t attached to the game by a cord.

      Gladys sighed. Yep, another day drawing to a close. Another day spent at her boring, lifeless, dead-end job topped off with a half-hour on the machines. The arcade machines, not the gaming machines – no, she was way sadder than that. She didn’t throw her money away on the slim chance of a windfall. She threw it away so she could shoot the same old crappy, pixelated monsters on the same old crappy arcade machines. Monsters was a generous term – they looked like brown blocks with vaguely angry faces. Still, it wasn’t the graphics that kept her coming back, she just… well… there wasn’t anything else to do. She didn’t have a boyfriend; she didn’t have a cool gang of buddies; she didn’t even have a dog. In fact, Barney, the 60-something guy who owned this fine, terribly smelly and aging establishment, was probably the closest thing she had to a friend. Wait, no, back up – that sounded really sad. She had friends; they just weren’t here in this stupid little coastal village in the middle-of-friggin-nowhere England. Why would they be? There was nothing here for a self-respecting 20-something except for an arcade. Okay, technically there were several pubs and some sort of seafood restaurant. But they only constituted a good time if drunk, 6ft, beefy, ye-old fishermen were

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