Ravenous (The Ravening #1)(32)
Author: Erica Stevens

“We’ll go to the other bridge,” Cade said reasonably. “It’s not that far. If we stick to the edge of the woods and move quickly, we can get there before daybreak.”

We hadn’t discussed if we were going to attempt the crossing. I knew that Jenna was for it, but what did everyone else feel? I looked to Aiden, but he was conversing with one of the men.

I thought of the other bridge, and then I thought of something else. “What about the military base?” I asked. They all frowned as they stared at me in the night. Their eyes were eerily aglow in the moonlight filtering through the trees. “I know it’s closed. I know the aliens kicked everyone off of it, but it’s big, and it’s wooded. There are a lot of places to hide there, a lot of buildings we can sneak into, and there might be weapons still there or maybe even food.”

“I don’t know the base very well,” one man said.

“The aliens could be out there,” another woman replied. “Wouldn’t it make sense for them to take over that place, and use it as their own?”

I couldn’t argue with that, it would make sense, but I doubted the aliens were on the base. I didn’t think they would take up any sort of permanent residence down here. They hated us; they thought nothing of us, which was very obvious by the fact that they were hunting us like rabid animals and putting us down without hesitation. Now that I had thought about the base, I wasn’t ready to let it go. There could be weapons out there still; there would be places to hide. There may even be places that we could make a stand, places we could defend ourselves from. We couldn’t run forever, we wouldn’t survive doing that. Our supplies were limited.

But as much as the base was taking root in my mind, I could tell that they were dead set against it. “We have to get to the mainland,” another man in the group said.

I sighed in resignation, Abby’s hand tightened on my arm. There was no reasoning with them, no arguing with them. They had their minds set. I looked toward Aiden, but he wasn’t going to argue, I could see that on his face. He felt the mainland was the best option also. A shiver rolled down my spine, they were going to get themselves killed, and they were going to take my friends and family with them.

CHAPTER 16

I didn’t argue as we fell into step with them. Though it was almost five miles, we arrived at the Bourne Bridge far faster than I would have liked. I stared at the impressive metal structure arching gracefully over the canal; it was the twin in many ways to the Sagamore. I kept waiting for the Twilight Zone music to start playing, kept waiting for something to happen. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were the only people left on earth, that we’d been sucked into some kind of time loop or perhaps were even being punked. I kept waiting for someone to jump out and yell, ‘Gotcha!’

Neither of those things happened.

The roadway leading to the bridge was as clear as day to me. It almost seemed as if the lights were trying to lure us onto the soaring structure like a mouse to cheese. I was certain we would be snatched up the minute we stepped out of the shadows of the forest.

Abby stood on tiptoe and pulled me closer to her. “I don’t want to cross it.”

I pressed my finger against my lips for her to keep quiet. The others gathered together to talk amongst themselves. Abby and I stayed back. I was against separating, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I wasn’t going to cross that bridge, and I wasn’t going to let them make Abby cross it either. I didn’t know what we would do if we were left behind, but I was willing to take my chances on this side rather than step onto that death trap.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Cade was shaking his head firmly with his arms crossed over his chest. There were small tremors running through Abby’s petite frame. Jenna was behind Cade, nodding as he shook his head. Aiden was hanging back, looking unsure of either option while Bret was raptly listening to each argument, trying to decipher which course of action he felt would be best.

“You have to stay here Abby.”

I tried to free myself from her grip, but she only held on tighter. “No.”

“Abby…”

But it didn’t matter; the group was beginning to break apart. Aiden was coming toward us. I could tell by the set of his shoulders, and the determination in his eyes, that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“We’re going to go over in groups,” he told me.

“I’m not going over,” I told him.

“Bethany…”

“No Aiden, I am not crossing that bridge. It’s suicide to do so.”

“It’s suicide to stay here,” he said.

“Crossing that bridge is instantaneous suicide and you know that. We still have a chance over here; we can come up with a different plan if we just think about it reasonably.”

“The aliens might not have considered the bridges.”

The sheer stupidity of that statement caused my mouth to drop as I gaped at him. They somehow had the technology to navigate galaxies with ease, and freeze a good chunk of the population, but they wouldn’t have the foresight to monitor the only two ways off of Cape Cod? I had no idea what anyone was thinking, but they weren’t using their brains to do so. “Aiden…”

“We can’t stay here Bethany.”

“There has to be another way,” I insisted.

“What way?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. The canal was known for its treacherous currents, and to swim it would be almost as obvious as running across the bridge, but even that seemed a better option to me than this. And then I knew. I knew exactly how we could get to the other side. “What if I have a better plan Aiden?” I asked.

He stared unblinkingly at me. “What is it?”

“If we find some diving gear, we could use it to swim across. We could stay under water, stay out of view. It could work.”

Aiden became silent; Abby stared up at me, while Cade seemed to be thinking it over. “None of us know how to use scuba gear, and where would we even get it?” Aiden finally asked.

I didn’t care if none of us could scuba dive. I was far more willing to take my chances with it than I was with the bridge. “Someone here might know how, and there’s a rental place a few miles away. They have all kinds of beach supplies in there; they may have something that we could use.”

The other group had moved closer to us, but none of them spoke out when I mentioned scuba diving. “We can figure it out,” I whispered.