Taken Over (Book 2 The Ravening Series) Read Free Page A

admiration for me I saw blooming in his eyes. I didn’t want to touch either one of the dead bodies, but we couldn ’ t leave Sarah behind, and this was the first opportunity we ’d ha d to be able to study one of these creatures. Dr. Bishop would be pissed if we didn’t seize it.
       I glanced between the two broken bodies, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to Sarah. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. She had been a good person, and now she was gone. Though the thought of touching the creature before me was repu gnant , I simply could not touch Sarah.
       Bending down I seized hold o f the mess before me. I had expected it to be slimy or mushy ; I was surprised that it was neither. It was solid beneath my hands, cool, and smooth. There was something about it that it reminded me of silver, hard and cold when cooled, yet liquid and pliable when heated. I was so caught up in that realization that I hadn’t noticed Bret had also grabbed hold of the creature until he nudged me gently.
       “Come on Bethy let’s get the hell out of here.”
       I swallowed heavily and managed a small nod. Though th is creature was nowhere near as large as some of t he others I had seen, it was still exceptionally difficult to maneuver through the woods with its bulky weight , flopping tentacle , and insect like legs . My legs burned from exertion as we struggled to slip through the trees as quietly as possible .
       Before this war with the aliens I ’ d been reasonably fit, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle hauling this thing through the woods. But then again , there were many things that I wouldn’t have been able to handle before, but could now. Like a gun or scuba gear or even walking over this r ough terrain carrying at least a hundred pounds of monster. My legs hurt, but I wasn’t sweating overly much, and my breathing wasn’t labored. Or at least not yet anyway.
       We reached the top of a crest, the large boat warehouse we had discovered a week ago came into view. When I had first been rescued by the ragtag group of survivors, they had been holed up in a lobster warehouse, but that had been three housings ago. We didn’t have homes anymore, we couldn’t ; we just had buildings that sheltered us until it was time to move on. T ime t o head into areas that the aliens had already cleared of the F rozen O nes , to move further away from the danger ous zones , though I doubted there were any safe zones out there . Not anymore.
       I hated moving further away from the last place I had seen Cade, but I knew location had no meaning in my attempt to find him. For all I knew , he might not even be on th is planet anymore , l et alone still in the Cape Cod area . It was foolish of me to resent moving further inland, but I couldn’t stop the feeling. I t was constantly with me.
       I resent ed being forced out of the only home I had ever known, the only place I had ever known. Even if it never could be home again. I did not kid myself into thinking that I would ever have a home again, that anything would ever be the same, but I wasn’t ready to let it all go either . I was like a stubborn child clinging to my pacifier, unwilling to relinquish it even though it was time . Everything I had ever known was gone , it was time to move on, but I was having a hard time doing so . There was no way to stop what had happened , at least not one that any of us could think of , and to stay still was to die . All we could hope for was to survive every day and to keep hold of the few loved ones we had left. I was more fortunate then most to still have Bret, and my brother and sister. There were others that still had family with them, but not many. Most had no one left. We made our own families now.
       I sighed softly as we moved slowly down the hill. The only good thing about all the moving was that Dr. Bishop had to leave behind all of the frozen bodies he’d collected. He still had one, but the roomful of