Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.
    “Probably the leader,” she said.
    “Try to connect with it,” DeVontay said. “Do some ESP.”
    Her brow furrowed and he expected the sparking in her eyes to increase in intensity, but she shook her head in defeat. “No signal.”
    “This is some serious Roman gladiator shit here,” DeVontay said, peering at the gap under the door. “Except we don’t even get weapons.”
    He galloped for the wall beneath the infant, limping and wincing. He expected their mysterious little hand blasters to knock him down, but none of the Zaps reacted. He leaped for the lip of the wall, but his fingers slapped three feet short. When he landed, his ankle folded and he rolled into a writhing ball of pain.
    While he was down, he received a better view of what lay on the other side of the door. The concrete surface appeared to continue out as far as he could see, and rising from it were two scaly stumps of legs with long talons protruding from their bases. When Rachel knelt to help him, he said, “Some kind of reptile creature, looks like. Big. Scary. The usual.”
    The door was now about a foot off the floor, rising inch by inch as if the Zaps drew pleasure from slow psychological torture. DeVontay wondered if this was all some kind of experiment or test. The Zaps could’ve easily killed them in the barn, or while they were unconscious in this pen, instead of creating a bizarre and bloody spectacle. Judging from the long, sharp feet of the creature, it was probably as tall as they were, and he could only imagine its blunt lizard face and bulging black eyes.
    “Do we fight it or try to get past it?” Rachel asked.
    “I can’t run. Let it go after me, and then you make a run for it. Head out that door and don’t look back.”
    Rachel glared at him, her eyes intense and strange yet so deeply beautiful that he wouldn’t even mind being torn limb from limb if he could fall into them forever.
    “I’m not letting you die for me, honey,” she said. “Whichever way it rolls, we go together.”
    DeVontay studied the concrete floor. It was old and cracked, obviously not new construction like the walls appeared to be. The Zaps must have superimposed their own material on an existing building, although DeVontay had no idea where they were. The air was cool, so they hadn’t been taken many miles, but if they’d been unconscious for more than a day, they could easily be a hundred miles from the bunker.
    He scraped at a crumbling seam in the concrete, hoping he could dig out a weighty chunk he could use as a weapon. The door continued its slow ascent, and the reptilian beast on the other side padded forward a few steps, its smoked-ivory claws clicking on the hard surface. It seemed to sense prey waiting on the other side and grew impatient. The frantic roars gained in pitch and volume, echoing abrasively along the corridor.
    One of DeVontay’s fingernails ripped to the quick, sending a searing jolt of pain up his arm, but he managed to loosen a small gray hunk about the size of a walnut. Rachel helped him stand, and they faced the door that continued its agonizing upward trek. The small chunk of concrete only made DeVontay feel pathetic and silly, and he pictured it bouncing ineffectually off the lizard’s rounded skull and eliciting laughter from the crowd.
    Either way, it was almost show time.
    “I’m sorry,” Rachel said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “If I wasn’t a half-Zap, they wouldn’t have found us in the barn. And if I was more of a Zap, I could communicate with them. But—”
    “Hush that talk,” DeVontay said. “You’re just right.”
    The opening was now high enough to reveal the creature’s tail, which whipped and curled in the air like a sinuous python. The thing’s legs were a mottled gray-green, as if its progenitor had once hidden in mossy habitats. It stooped low as if picking up the scent oozing beneath the door, but apparently it wasn’t agile enough to bend and scurry through the narrow gap.
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