Grace Lost (The Grace Series) Read Free

asked, my voice strained.
    “No,” was all Boggs said while he
looked out toward the street.  After a long pause, he finally turned to
me.  “I can’t see anything Zo, but I think we need to leave and find
somewhere safe.  My Explorer’s in the garage.  I think we should pack
what we can and leave.”
    “Where will we go?” I asked, still
speaking in a whisper.  My body was trembling.
    He shook his head back and forth,
a bead of sweat dripping down his temple.  “I don’t know.  Let’s just
start by seeing if we can get any news on the TV.”
    I nodded.  He crept down from
the couch and crawled to the corner where the television sat on the
floor.  It was an old set, the kind that doesn’t have a remote
control.  Boggs turned a knob and we waited.  Nothing happened.
    “One of those explosions must have
been a transformer,” I mumbled, now biting on my thumbnail.
    “Yeah,
probably.”
    I was on the verge of spilling
tears.  Boggs came over and sat beside me on the tattered sofa. He looked
me in the eyes, holding my head in his hands to make sure I was fully paying
attention.
    “We have to keep it together, Zoe.
Ok?” 
    I nodded. 
    “We need to go upstairs, get
water, food, clothes, cash, blankets .  Like we’re going to be gone for a few days.   Can you
help me with that?” 
    I nodded again, still fighting the
tears. 
    “Ok, let’s go. Stay away from the
windows.”   He stood up, and held a hand out to me.
    I took his hand and stood.
    “Jesus, Zoe. You’re
bleeding.”  He was looking down at my pants.  He knelt down to inspect
where blood from my hip had stained my jeans. 
    “It’ll be fine,” I said,
sniffling.  I didn’t want him to know just how much it was starting to
hurt.
    “We’ll need to look at it
upstairs.  No arguing.”
    He walked to the far end of the
room, toward the stairway, and I followed.  We climbed the steps, Boggs in
front.  The landing that divided the staircase half-way up squeaked as we
reached it, causing us to pause.  Now directly in front of the main door
to the house, we heard unearthly moans coming from outside.  As Boggs
stepped closer to the door to check the deadbolt, I took a step back.
    “Boggs, your parents are still in
Arizona, right?” I whispered.
    “Ya, why?”
    “I thought I heard something
upstairs.”
    Boggs took his place in front of
me again, hushing his own voice now.  “Stay here, Zoe.”
    Before I could argue, he let go of
my hand and was halfway up the last set of steps.  I felt my stomach drop,
the bitter taste of bile rising in my throat.  Sick with fear, I threw up
on the next step down from the landing.  I used the bottom of my t-shirt
to wipe my mouth.  I listened for some sign from Boggs, but only heard the
horrible moaning coming from outside.  I dared to look through the small
pane of glass in the door that allowed for peeking at visitors.  In the
street I could see the car that had crashed, turned on its side with smoke
coming from under the hood.  It was down about half a block, halfway in
the yard of an elderly couple that had lived there since before I could
remember.  The Robinson’s house sat across the street, next to my
own.  There was a woman lying face down on the lawn.  She was wearing
little white shorts, now stained red with blood, and a green and white flowered
bikini top.  By her flaming red hair I knew it was Nicole Park, the middle
aged woman who had moved in last year.  I could tell she was dead by her
deeply pale skin and the massive amounts of blood surrounding her.  Her
left arm was missing, the stump sporting torn muscle and ligaments.  The
neighborhood ended in a cul-de-sac, which was only partly in my line of
sight.  I could see several figures kneeling around something.  They
moved in unnatural ways.  Not far from them I could see a bicycle lying on
the ground, its rear wheel still spinning, and a pair of legs that were not
attached to a torso.  There was so much