Invaded by Holly Hook

Author:Holly Hook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holly Hook
Published: 2017-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I couldn’t crawl very far away from the scene before I collapsed on my stomach and let the tears flow out. Matt stopped, too.

“Tess,” he whispered. “I saw what was happening. I didn’t see your parents down there.”

“They’re making new Grounders,” I said.

“You mean, the Grounders are taking over fresh people,” Matt said.

“You know what I mean,” I hissed. I hated that I could only see Matt’s feet right now. I needed to see him face to face. He was brutally honest, but that was comforting. I hadn’t looked upon the scene long enough to tell if my parents were there. If Matt had seen them, he would have told me.

The fact that he was truthful was my only comfort.

“Where did they get that whole tub of them?” I whispered. I didn’t want to say what was killing me inside. Matt and I were trying to save the world, but by killing dozens of Grounders, we had condemned more people to get body-snatched. I wondered if the Grounders we had taken down first somehow survived, but that was impossible. I had seen how dead they became after the gas and the heat gun.

Condemning people wasn't an Earther thing to do.

“There must be a lot of them underground,” Matt said, “waiting to come out. Come on. We need to look around, and then get out of here.”

I sucked down the tears, hating myself for my show of weakness. Matt wasn’t crying. I shouldn’t have expected to see anything comforting. It was no wonder the old man back in the museum was crazy. He must have witnessed this stuff a million times. This, and worse. I wondered what the Grounders promised him if he stayed quiet.

I had to go on. My grandfather had known the truth and now I did, too. I had to continue his mission. He might have died, but I couldn’t give up. The thought felt like I was dishonoring him.

So Matt and I continued. We crawled through the vent, circling the room. A woman screamed. A Grounder must be plunging its tentacles into her brain. Matt and I might have to fight these people. I hated that I had left the heat gun in the walker. I could have destroyed every Grounder in that vat of blood and saved the people below, at least for a little while.

It would have gotten the gas turned on, but it would have given those people down there a chance.

I didn’t dare look down at the scene again as we crawled over more vents. No one spoke in the room below, except for the condemned. One man begged the Grounders to spare him. A woman cried, trying to stifle her tears. These sounds would haunt me for the rest of my life. I’d get that traumatic disorder that soldiers used to get.

At last, the vents opened into a fork, and he crawled ahead, allowing me to get into the new opening first. He was a gentleman again. That was our relationship: sarcasm and brutal honesty.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.