Ravenous (The Ravening #1)(6)
Author: Erica Stevens

I was feeling that strange connection to him again now, and it was giving me an odd sense of security and warmth. I couldn’t turn into a blathering idiot in front of him. I just couldn’t. No matter how much I didn’t want to stay in this cramped room by myself.

My hand fell back to my side, my lips pinched as I managed to give him a brisk nod. He continued to study me, but I kept my face impassive and tried to keep my fear hidden from him. I wasn’t sure it was working though.

Finally he turned away from me and slipped out the door. It wasn’t until I heard the lock click into place that I realized I didn’t know how to escape the room if he didn’t come back.

CHAPTER 3

I was shaking, close to tearing my hair out, and on the verge of screaming hysterically by the time that Cade returned. He hadn’t been gone long, minutes only, but I was sweating so badly that my clothes were soaked and I was horrified by the realization that I was probably starting to smell worse than the dank room surrounding me. Though I tried to hide my distress from him, tried to put on a brave front and prove that I wasn’t a weak idiot, I knew I failed miserably.

He closed the door behind him. “The man?” I managed to choke out.

Cade raised a black eyebrow, his head cocked to the side as he watched me. My shaking had eased now that he was back, but my throat was still clogged. I was humiliated by the fact that I was on the verge of tears. When I had to be at my strongest, I was close to completely falling apart, and all because of four stupid walls and a door.

“In the basement. He’s fine, or as fine as he can be, considering.” I managed a nod. My hand fluttered nervously up to push my dampened hair back. “Are you ok?”

“Fine,” I croaked. “Just fine.”

“Are you claustrophobic?”

I started to shake my head to deny it. I had never admitted it to anyone, even if there were times when I couldn’t hide it. I hadn’t even truly admitted it to myself. I was too ashamed by the fact that cramped spaces tended to upset and frighten me, too ashamed of the weakness. My family knew about it though, as I went out of my way to avoid tight enclosures, including cars for extended periods of time. “Maybe a little,” I hedged.

“I can open the door again if that will help, but we won’t be able to talk.”

My gaze flitted longingly to the closed door. I was unreasonably certain the air out there was much fresher than the air in here. I would like to speak with him though, and the last thing I wanted was that hideous thing slithering into this room. “No I’m fine.” It wasn’t a complete lie, I did feel better with him here, and I was certain that my fear would lessen the more I was exposed to, and forced to acknowledge it. Though he didn’t look as if he believed me, he didn’t reopen the door. “Will he be ok out there?”

“I think so. They seem to only be going for the people on the street right now.”

“Why?”

His jaw clenched, a muscle in his cheek jumped. “I think they’re trying to clear it.”

I wanted to vehemently deny his words, but the second I heard them I knew he was right. Those things were focusing on the streets because they had to clear them, and the frozen people were obstacles right now. I hadn’t been sick since I was a kid, but I was fairly certain that by the end of today I would end up losing my breakfast. If not my life.

A chill raced down my spine. The hair on my neck and arms stood on end. There was a very good chance that I, that we, would not survive this day. This attack was methodical, well planned, deliberate, and brutal. The aliens wouldn’t care for survivors, they wouldn’t tolerate them, and that is exactly what Cade and I were.

I wrapped my arms around myself as I tried to ease the numbness slipping through my body. “I can’t stay here,” I whispered. “My family. I have to get to them.”

Cade nodded. “We have to wait a little bit.”

“My sister…”

“We’ll get to them Bethany. I promise we will get to them.”

I found that I believed him. I didn’t know why I did, or why I felt that he would do whatever he could to help me, but I knew that he would. My head bowed, tears of frustration and anger burned my eyes. I wouldn’t shed them though; I hadn’t cried in years, I wouldn’t cry now.

“Why are we still moving while everyone else is, well…”

My question trailed off, I didn’t know how to describe these people right now. Frozen? Mannequins? Corpses? The living dead? Whatever they were, and no matter what they were called, they were the freakiest things I had ever seen. “I don’t know. I imagine that somehow we were all given something, whether through food or water, medicine or surgery, or even simply the air we breathe. It seems that for some reason it didn’t work on us though.”

“Not yet.”

Cade’s eyes were hooded as he tilted his head to study me. I swallowed heavily, hating the words I had just uttered, but we both knew that they were true. Just because we weren’t statues now didn’t mean that we weren’t going to become them. At any moment we could freeze and become trapped within the confines of our own bodies. That thought did nothing to ease the constriction in my chest that being within this room had started. In fact, it took all I had not to completely fall apart. Took all I had to keep on breathing even though it was suddenly very difficult. I didn’t know if those people were consciously aware of the fact that they were frozen, about to be killed, but I preferred to think that they weren’t. I couldn’t bear the thought that they knew they were stuck like that and about to be devoured. If they did know…

I shut the thought abruptly off. It was too awful to even begin to contemplate. I couldn’t take that if it were to happen to me. I would rather die first.

“They may simply be taking us in stages,” he agreed. “Or it may never happen to us. We are all different; we are all made of different DNA. There is no way that everyone would react in the same way to whatever it was they gave us. I’m sure we’ll be fine Bethany.”

I would like to believe that we wouldn’t be struck immobile any minute now. I had a feeling that if the aliens discovered whatever they had done hadn’t worked on us, the consequences for us would be even worse than what the people on the street were going through. They wouldn’t be happy to learn that they weren’t perfect, and that things hadn’t gone exactly as planned. We would be punished.

Horribly.

I swallowed heavily, frightened by the realization. We couldn’t be caught. But what were we supposed to do? Where were we supposed to go? I labored to keep my mounting panic contained. First things first, I had to get out of this room and find my family. I prayed that they were safe.