An Agreement With Hell by Dru Pagliassotti

Author:Dru Pagliassotti
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780984553549
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2010-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

XX

Jarret drew back, his eyes wide. Peter’s arm tightened around Alison’s shoulders.

The broken and screaming bodies were gone, but the hole in the ground remained.

“Maybe an ambulance came and picked them up,” Peter ventured, without conviction.

Alison shook her head.

“The monsters took them,” she said, knowing that she was right because that’s what always happened in the movies. “To eat, or to turn into something else.”

She felt Peter shudder, even though he was doing his best to look brave.

“Monsters.” Still skeptical, Jarret edged forward and craned his neck, not getting too close to the broken dirt and sidewalk. He played a flashlight over the ground, then jerked the beam aside. “Is that blood?”

Alison swallowed and looked around. The dorms were pitch black. Everyone had run off—they’d seen a few students running across campus, toward the bright lights around the collapsed library, and they’d seen even more climbing into their cars and pulling out of the dorm parking lots.

Still, the campus wasn’t silent. She heard distant sirens and screeching, car horns, shouting. Sounds of life. Somehow, that was encouraging.

She put a cold hand over her mouth, trying to concentrate. She’d convinced the boys to go with her to get Peter’s SUV and see if the people who’d been hurt were okay, and on the way she’d told them her ideas about the big snake and the cold weather. Jarret hadn’t entirely believed them about the snake, but she thought he was coming around to their point of view.

“Come on,” Peter said, looking over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They made their way around the cracked, sagging dorm, Jarret’s flashlight picking out more craters in the ground where the giant snake had surfaced. Then they got to the parking lot and found more students huddled there, speaking in low, urgent tones.

Alison limped up to one of her classmates. “What’s going on?”

The girl turned, a look of barely restrained panic on her face.

“The roads are all torn up,”

“By the earthquake?” Jarret asked. The girl glanced at him, looking amazed.

“By the snakes,” she said, her voice expressing her disbelief. “Haven’t you seen them?”

“Uh, not yet.” He blinked, looking around. The rest of the students were all looking over their shoulders.

“Look.” One of them pulled out his cell phone and held it out. Alison craned her neck to see the picture he was showing Jarret.

“Looks like a blur,” Jarret said.

“It’s a monster snake!” Offended, the young man pulled his phone back. “I uploaded it to the web. I didn’t see any other giant snake pictures there yet, so I think I’m the first.”

“How bad can torn-up roads be?” Peter asked, sounding nervous. “My truck’s got four-wheel drive.”

“Like, canyon bad,” Ally’s classmate retorted. “People have been, like, just parking and climbing down and back out again, so it’s a total traffic jam, too.”

“Then the snakes aren’t trying to keep us from leaving; they’re just keeping vehicles from coming and going,” Alison said, frowning. “Like the police, or fire trucks. Or the Army. That’s bad. That means they’re intelligent.”

“They’re aliens,” someone said.

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