Taken Over (Book 2 The Ravening Series) (23 page)

   Lloyd had started to move, but his steps were hesitant, weary. Bret followed behind but Jenna and I hung back for a moment. We had not come through the front door; these
rooms
all
belonged to
patients. These
doors held
endless possibilities, and none of them were good.
It was like a funhouse
,
but this one was full
of horrors
straight
from hell.

  
Slowly we began to follow Bret and Lloyd down the hall. I tried to keep my gaze focused ahead, but every once in awhile it would stray into one of the rooms. So far they all appeared empty, devoid of all human remains, but judging by the increasing rancid smell I didn’t think it was going to stay that way.
The three of them were lucky enough to be able to pull their shirts up over their noses
,
I wasn’t so lucky
.
I
knew I
sure as hell didn’t smell good
right now
,
but
I
definitely
smelled
better than this damn place
and I definitely preferred my own odor
over the hospitals
right now
.

   “Maybe this was a bad idea,” Jenna whispered.

   “There’s no going back now
.”

  
Bret’s tone of voice was far harsher than normal, tension radiat
ed
off of him
; there was a
bleakness in his eyes that I despised
.
Jenna recoiled slightly, wounded by his cold attitude
and demeanor
. I wanted to reach out to her, to
soothe
her, but I could barely keep the gun in my shaking hand let alone comfort someone.
A strange buzzing reached my ears; I frowned as Lloyd stopped suddenly. His face turned three shades of green as he gaped into the room on his right. His hand trembled as he reached forward and pulled the door shut.
I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to
see
what was in that room as I now understood the source of the buzzing.

  
Flies.

   “Please don’t let us find the maternity ward,” Jenna whispered.

   Bile rose up my throat;
I gagged softly but somehow managed to keep it suppressed.
My hands were shaking. My palms were so sweaty that I was beginning to fear I would not be able to keep hold of my gun if something
did
attack us.
The thought of stumbling across innocent babies was atrocious; I
w
ould
n’t
be able to
handle it. For the first time I realized that there were children out there,
completely
defenseless children that had died
when The Freezing had occurred, a
nd not all of their deaths had resulted at the hands of the aliens. Some of them had
occurred
because there
had been
no one left to care for them
, no one left to feed, bathe, and change them
.
They had been alone, frightened, and unable to defend themselves against the monsters that had taken our world from us.

   A sob lodged in my throat, I blinked back the tears that clogged my eyes. I had
n’t thought of the
defenseless
before. There hadn’t been time through the
all consuming
need to survive. There hadn’t been time through my own grief and loss. Now, I could not shake the thought, or the
fury
that came boiling up with it. The
aliens
would be made to pay, one way or another, I would help find a way to make them
pay
for everything they’d done
,
and everyone they’d hurt
.

   I just didn’t know how, or where, to start. As long as we stayed alive there was always hope, always a chance that we would one day destroy them as surely as they were destroy
ing
us. We just couldn’t let them succeed
first
.

  
Lloyd took a turn in the hall, going in
low and
fast as he moved swiftly to the other side. He nodded to Bret before sweeping further down the hall. We moved
more rapidly
through the hospital
, driven
swiftly
on by the hollow emptiness
and desolation
surrounding us.

   The pharmacy was the first thing we came across. The door was open, not because it had been left that way, but because it had been bent in, bowed at the bottom and then
ripped
u
p
ward
. The metal frame of the door had been ripped half off, it hung at an angle to the floor.
Lloyd pocketed his gun
to
pull his pack from his back and sw
i
ng it forward.
He held it against his chest as he crawl
ed
under the twisted metal remains.

   “Gra
b as many essentials as you can,
”
he commanded as we followed him into the large room.

  
Shelves lined the room, dividing
it
into different sections and blocking Lloyd as he disappeared into the back. Some of the shelves had been knocked over,
broken
bottles
and discarded pills
littered the floor. I grit my jaw as pills crunched
and snapped
softly beneath my feet.
I knew that the crunching wasn’t that loud but it seemed as loud as gunshots to me in the hushed building.
I searched the shelves but they had already been picked over
,
either by other survivors, or stripped on purpose by the aliens.
Then again the aliens had brought life saving, advanced medicine
,
with them upon arrival. For all I knew we had stopped making any drugs that could have helped us months ago
in favor of what the aliens had to offer us
. Fury simmered through me at the sheer ignorance and stupidity we had shown by believing the line of crap the
y
had fed us.

   It had gotten us nothing but heartache and death.

  
I ignored the white tennis shoe lying on the ground, struggling not to think about the person that had left it behind as I moved past the row of antacids. I supposed heartburn sucked, but it wasn’t on my list of priorities f
or
lifesaving necessities.
Neither were birth control pills
or prescription vitamins.

   “
Here
.
”

   I caught the bottle Lloyd tossed
at
me
and
turn
ed
it ove
r in my hand to read the label.
Doxycycline
.
I nodded as I twisted the top off and dry swallowed one of them. I hoped it was enough to fight off whatever
microbes
might be multiplying in my body right now
due to that hideous thing
.
T
here was no way to know what kind of germs those things might be carrying with them.
The label
said to only take one
,
but I
decided to
t
a
k
e
another
.
I was probably going to want some of those antacids afterwards
,
but I didn’t care
I wanted whatever
germs
might be lurking within me dead
.

  
I was frightened that even now there might be something taking up residence in my body, changing me, or even destroying me
.
Perhaps eating me from the inside out.
I had seen the Alien movies
,
and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
,
far too often for me not to have all kinds of frightening and creepy thoughts.
I shuddered, and though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I took a third pill before capping the bottle.

  
I stuffed some extra strength T
ylenol and Ibuprofen into my bag
but all of the harder painkillers were gone.
I found five boxes of antibiotic cream. I eagerly opened one, bracing myself for the sting as I gently wiped it over my heated and bubbled flesh. My breath hissed out of me, my teeth grated sharply together, but I fully intended to keep dousing my shoulder with the crap if it would help kill off anything that creature had left on me. I hoped someone found some burn cream somewhere; it would be nice to have something that soothed the fierce sting of my tortured skin. 

  
I
shoved the rest into my bag and
took a deep breath as I zipped
it
closed. Everything seemed to be going too fast, too rapidly. I felt as if I hadn’t had a chance to just stop and think since
we had set out on this mission
. But then, what was I going to think about? My father,
my
mother, Cade
, the lost children
? Abby and Aiden?
W
as I going to drive myself crazy with worry about them?

   It was better not to think
,
but it was also exhausting. There were so many suppressed emotions roiling around within me that I could barely breathe sometimes. There was so much pain and loss lingering within
me
that there were times I wasn’t sure I could go on. And in this moment, at this time, I was trapped within that feeling.

   It hit me out of nowhere,
the weight of my grief
roll
ed
up
t
o bury me within its
cloak
of oppression and pain. Though I tried to stop it
,
the sudden longing for Cade s
urged
up out of nowhere. It rose up like a tsunami, towering above me for a moment before crashing down and burying me within its crushing depths.
P
ain choked my lungs and throat as surely as ocean water would have
choked me
. My hands fisted tight, I inhaled a shaky breath as I struggled to reign in the crushing
agony
trying to consume me.