Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain) Read Online Free PDF

hunt.
    It ’s with uncontrolled glee that I leave the house, all thoughts of yesterday gone from my mind. This is what I live for now.
     
     
    It's after my next meal—eighty-one—that I begin to understand that something isn't right. It has been three days since I was bitten in that fight, but there's still something wrong with me, and I'm not clearheaded enough to figure out what it is.
                  I'm usually filled with energy and vigor after I eat, but today I only feel tired, as though something is eating away at me for a change. I could sleep for a week if I weren't so damn hungry. The man I killed should have lasted me days, but no matter how much I eat, I don't feel satisfied. There's so little of him left that I know he won't be waking up again, not even as a walking corpse. His jeans and tweed jacket more than cover the scraps.
    Why am I still hungry?
    Without knowing what the problem is, there isn't a thing I can do to stop it.
    Best I don't think on it for too long.
    Maybe the man in the tweed jacket had friends nearby. He seemed a little unhinged, and I know he isn't someone I would have ever chosen to spend the apocalypse with. But those people tend to stick with their own. Where there's one post-apocalyptic crazy, there's bound to be a whole family of them.
    I'm moving mo re slowly than I should be, but I push myself forward anyway, refusing to rest. Not until I've found where my victim has been living. Not until I find something new to distract myself with.
     
     
    My memory lapses are getting worse. Is it connected to how sick I've been feeling, or am I finally losing my mind once and for all? I don't think I want to know. All that matters right now is figuring out where I am and how I got here.
    I woke up nearly frozen to death, slumped beside a dumpster. And I have no idea how I got here. None.
    In the past it's been the memories of my old life that have disappeared into nothing, but I don't remember anything about the last—I don't even know. Hours? Days? I can't remember anything, and every muscle in my body is screaming for me to curl up and go back to sleep. To rest and fight off...
    It finally comes to me. I pull up my sleeve and hastily untie the makeshift bandage on my arm.
    It's infected. Badly infected. Blood-poisoning levels of infected. Red streaks stretch out from where I was bitten, and the whole area is red and swollen, practically radiating heat.
    I never even considered that this was something I had to worry about. I've been able to fight off every other ailment since I was infected. It's been the one upside of the fate I've resigned myself to. Nothing can stop me. Nothing can kill me.
    Except this probably will.
    No, this definitely will. There aren't any options available to me. No doctors. No drugs.
    There aren't any miracles for people like me. Not now.
    The sound of a car door slamming pulls the beast forward. We're not alone here. But I can't place where the sound came from because my ears are ringing so loudly. Is this why I came here in the first place? Tracking someone? It doesn't matter now. I pull myself up, but it takes most of my energy to get back on my feet. I don't think I can fight. But the beast won’t let me hide.
    Whatever I do, I can't just stand here, waiting for someone to come along and kill me. No one asks questions before they shoot —not anymore. Both ends of the narrow alley open up to a street on the other side. I'll have to pick a route and hope the direction I choose won't lead me right to the barrel of a gun.
    Faced with a fifty-fifty chance, of course I choose wrong. I move barely thr ee feet out of the alleyway when I see someone, maybe a soldier, rifling through the trunk of his car. The beast wants me to try and take him while his back is turned, but I’m already backing up. My foot knocks against something and it makes the tiniest noise.
    Run.
    Too late.
    He stands up and turns, looking right at me.
    After months of fighting, I