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"Mister? Are you ok?" she asked timidly, a groaning noise was all the answer she got and she realized he indeed had to be alive no matter how bad he looked.  Leaning over him she took a hold of his shoulder and tried to help him straighten out his torso.  It was hen his head finally turned and she saw what was left of his face that she screamed.  The moan got louder and he reached up for her as black spots danced in front of her vision and she fainted dead away.

Matt came out of the bathroom in the small sheriff’s substation and heard Bella hollering from the dispatch desk.  He hurried over to see what the commotion was all about.  She told him about the fragmented 911 call from little Sarah and how it cut off.  And now she couldn’t reach anyone on the radio at all.  Even her cell was dead she said!  Pulling his from his pocket he was startled to see he had no signal either.  That doesn’t make sense at all, he thought.  Bella convinced him to get in his car and check the far beach.  It wasn’t as if if it would take too long to drive around the small island to see what the girl had called about.

He had driven about a third of the way on the beachside road when he spotted them.  At first all he could make out were two figures a few feet from edge of the surf.  As he pulled his cruiser on to the shoulder he noticed the pink bicycle lying there and turned on his dome lights.  As far as he could tell the figures below paid no attention.  As he drew nearer he at first thought maybe the man was giving the child mouth to mouth as he was bent over her prone form, but then he got close enough to see clearly.

"What the hell?" he sputtered as skidded to a stop while fumbling for his sidearm.  The man raised his head towards Matt and he could see the gore all over his face and neck, and the ruin of the formerly darling little girl below him.  Was he eating her? 

"Hands up right now! Get away from her!" His shocked hands finally managed to clear his weapon from his holster and he raised it and pointed it at the ghoulish man.  A distant part of his brain noted how badly his hands were shaking and he made an effort to keep the quiver out of his voice.

"I mean it Mister! You get away from her now!"  At first he thought the man was following his orders as he did indeed begin to rise from the grisly remains below him.  And his hands were indeed rising.  But not in surrender, as Matt’s shocked mind realized, the man was coming for him.

"Stop right there or I will shoot you down! I mean it Goddammit!" Moaning the man shuffled forward again and he pulled the trigger.  His gun boomed twice and the man was blown off of his feet, two hole ripped into center chest.  Stepping forward he kneeled by the body of little Sarah.  On an island this size, everyone knew everyone else and he had seen the cute little blond around from the time she first walked.  Now what was left was almost unrecognizable.  Knowing there was no point, he still put his hand to her neck to feel for a pulse.  That was when he heard the noise behind him.  Whirling he shook his head as if he was dizzy when he saw the man was back on his knees and struggling to rise to his feet.

Scrambling backwards he shot the man again, and twice more.  Each bullet strike staggered the attacker but he gave up trying to rise to his feet and crawled forward, seizing the terrified deputies leg and sank his teeth deep in his ankle.  Matt cried out in pain and tried to push the man away but his grip felt like iron.  Pulling his way upward by Matt’s leg he bit him savagely again and again til finally in desperation Matt placed the gun directly against his head and pulled the trigger.  The top of the man’s head disappeared in a bloody explosion and his form slumped over the deputy and the dead girl. 

Dragging himself from beneath the body of his attacker Matt found he was unable to stand on his ruined leg.  He was contemplating crawling all the way to his cruiser when he heard the sweetest sound he could ever recall, the warble of an ambulance as it screeched around the corner.  Silently he thanked Bella for having the foresight to send out the medical unit as he lay back and passed out from the pain in his leg.

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