Julie Kagawa - Till The World Ends - Dawn of Eden / Thistle & Thorne / Sun Storm

“Maggie!” I hissed again, sweeping the light around. “Are you down here? Maggie!”

“Yes?”

Ben and I both jumped, swinging around as Maggie stepped between the aisles, holding several sets of folded sheets, a mini-flashlight stuck between them. She frowned at our reaction, looking confused. “Sorry, Miss Kylie. We ran of sheets to cover the bodies, so I came down to get some more. Are you all right?”

“Geez, Maggie!” I released Ben and slumped against the wall, my hand going to my heart. “You scared me half to—”

Something lunged between shelves and slammed into the girl, dragging her down with a screech. Her flashlight spun wildly, clinking to the floor before flickering out. Stumbling back, I caught a split-second glance of a spindly, emaciated creature that faintly resembled a man before it bent its head and sank its teeth into Maggie’s throat.

I screamed. Maggie’s body jerked and flopped to the cement, twitching, and the coppery smell of blood filled the room. My mouth gaped again, but nothing came out. In the flashlight beam, the thing raised its head and stared at me with Nathan’s face, no recognition in its dead white eyes, nothing but the flat, glazed stare of a predator. It hissed, and I couldn’t tear my gaze from its gleaming, jagged fangs, smeared with the blood of my intern.

My mind had gone blank. This wasn’t happening. That thing couldn’t exist, it was dead! The stress had finally gotten to me, and my mind had cracked.

Frozen, I stared at it, subconsciously knowing I was about to die. But the thing turned and started savaging Maggie’s corpse, tearing her open with long fingers, ripping into her with its fangs. Blood splattered everywhere, painting the walls with wet ribbons, and I threw myself backward, hitting the edge of a shelf.

Something grabbed my wrist, yanking me away. I cried out and fought to break loose, hitting the arm with the flashlight, barely conscious of what I was doing, until I realized it was Ben. He dragged me across the floor and up the staircase, his eyes hard, his mouth pressed into a thin white line.

We ducked into the stairwell, the smell of blood clogging our nostrils and the sound of ripping flesh following us out. Ben slammed the door behind us and leaned against it, gasping. I stood there, shaking, trying to gather my thoughts. Rain pounded the ceiling overhead, and lightning flickered erratically over the wall, reflecting the pulse at my throat.

Maggie. Maggie was gone. And that thing, that horrible, pale thing, had been Nathan. It couldn’t be real! I had seen him die. I knew he was dead, but now...

This had to be a nightmare.

“Kylie.” Ben’s voice was low, hoarse. I blinked, attempting to focus. “We have to get out of here, now. Do you have anything you have to take, anything you absolutely can’t leave behind?”

“Leave?” I stared at him, still reeling. “I can’t leave. What about Jenna?”

“We’ll take her, too.”

“But my patients! What about the survivors? I can’t leave them—”

“Kylie!” Ben pushed himself off the door and took my upper arms, forcing me to look at him. “They’re dead,” he whispered, his eyes dark with sorrow and guilt. “Everyone here is dead, or they will be. There’s nothing you can do for them anymore. But we have to get out of here now, if we want to survive ourselves.”

A crash from the main room startled me upright. Lightning danced over the walls, the flash revealing eerie dark spatters that hadn’t been there before. Fear, cold and acute, stabbed through me. Ben followed my gaze, his muscles coiled tight beneath his shirt.

“Come on,” he whispered, leading me down the hall. “My truck is out front. Let’s find Jenna and get out of...”

He stopped. I looked down the hall, and everything inside me went cold.

Ms. Sawyer’s gaunt, wasted body stood silhouetted in the doorway to the sick ward, still in the hospital gown she had died in. Blood stained her face and hands, smeared around her mouth and the fangs that protruded from her upper jaw. She carried something in her hands, something round and dripping, the size of a basketball.

Lightning flashed again, and I saw that it was Jenna’s head.

I might have gasped, or gagged, for the thing that had been Ms. Sawyer looked up, and her dead, blank eyes flashed to mine. Her mouth opened, fangs gleaming, like jagged bits of glass. She screamed, a wail unlike anything remotely human, and charged toward us.

Ben yanked me across the hall, ducked into Doc Adams’s office and slammed the door. A booming thud rattled the frame just as he threw the latch and looked frantically around for something to brace it with.

Another bang on the door, followed by the screech of the thing on the other side. I fell back in terror. Ben pulled me aside, dragged the old wooden desk from the corner and shoved it across the tile, pushing it up against the door.

“Kylie, come on!” His voice snapped me out of my daze. Crossing the room, he yanked back the curtain on the window, revealing the full fury of the storm outside. “Hurry, before it claws its way in.”

The door jumped inward a few inches, scraping the desk back, and nails clawed at the opening. More voices joined the one beyond the frame, terrifying shrieks and howls, as if a whole pack of the things were clustered outside. The door shook and began to open as pale arms and shoulders shoved their way inside.

Ben threw up the window with a blast of rain-scented wind. “Come on!” he yelled at me, and I threw myself forward. His hands grabbed my waist as I scrambled for the opening, pushing me through. I fell on wet pavement, gasping as my elbow struck the hard ground, and then Ben collapsed beside me, rolling to his feet.

He dragged me upright, and through the window, I saw the door burst inward and a host of pale, shrieking bodies spill into the room. Former patients, people who had died that very afternoon, reanimated and somehow transformed into bloodthirsty monsters. Their empty white eyes scanned the room, catching sight of us outside the window, and they lunged forward with vicious wails.

We ran.

My shoes splashed over the wet concrete, cold rainwater soaking my hair and clothes. The storm raged around us, forks of lightning slashing the sky over the buildings. Behind me, I heard the monsters’ savage cries as they leaped through the window and skittered after us.

I followed Ben around a corner, dodging a rubble pile, and nearly ran into a small white pickup parked between two buildings. I waited, heart hammering, as Ben fiddled with the keys, hands shaking as he tried to unlock the door. A monster leaped to the top of the rubble pile, hissed when it saw us and sprang forward.

Ben yanked open the door, reached in and pulled a shotgun out of the front seat. The monster leaped onto the hood, snarling, as Ben aimed the muzzle at it and pulled the trigger point-blank.

A flash and a deafening boom rocked the alley, nearly making my heart stop. The creature was hurled away, crumpling into the wall and slumping down, a bloody mess. But then it staggered to its feet, hissing, though there was a massive gaping hole that went right through its chest, showing jagged ribs. It shrieked again, sounding more pissed than hurt, and lurched forward as several others came around the corner.

Ben pushed me into the truck and lunged in after me, slamming the door just as Ms. Sawyer crashed into the glass. She shrieked at us, clawing the door with bony talons, as Ben jammed the keys into the ignition and the truck roared to life. The monster with the bloodied chest scrambled onto the hood again and lunged at me. Its head bounced off the windshield, and a spiderweb of cracks spread out from the impact. More creatures crowded the truck as Ben threw it into Drive. The vehicle lurched forward, striking several monsters as it roared out of the alley. The creature on the hood slipped and rolled off the side as Ben slammed his foot onto the gas and sped into the road.