Monster Read Online Free PDF Page A

climbing, they were able to suspend their food containers on a clothesline between two trees a suitable distance from their camp. Other than the food, they didn’t unpack much. Reed spread out a ground cloth, and they unrolled their sleeping bags on it.
    In the ebbing light, Beck changed into jeans and a warmer shirt. Now the cool air moving down the ravine made her glad she’d brought that buckskin jacket. She gladly put it back on.
    Their camp prepared, they sat on their sleeping bags in the deepening dark and munched on cold sandwiches.
    “We’ll stow our sandwich boxes and wrappers up in the Remote Storage Apparatus along with the other rations,” Reed said.
    Beck’s sandwich was cold and soggy. “So much for hot pine needle tea.”
    “Maybe tomorrow.” He snapped a few pictures of her.
    She smiled, a shade of smirk on her lips despite the wad of sandwich still in her cheek. “So I wonder what happened to Mr. Thompson?”
    “The bear wouldn’t have raided the cabin if he’d been here. I’m guessing he went back down to Abney to bring up more supplies.”
    “Well, Mr. Survival wasn’t too smart to leave all that food in the cabin in the first place, am I right?”
    Reed nodded, conceding the point even as it puzzled him. “It sure didn’t work out, did it?”
    Beck swallowed her bite of sandwich before she spoke again. “Maybe he’s planning on coming up with Sing and Cap in the morning.”
    “That’s why we need to sit tight. Stick with the plan.”
    Beck chewed and thought it over. It did make sense. Sometime in the midmorning, Randy Thompson would come up the trail from Abney. Cap and Sing would be right there with him carrying in more supplies. Everything would fall together, and they would all make the best of it. She allowed herself to breathe a little easier. Reed seemed to have a handle on things. Maybe she’d trust him. Maybe.
    She lay back on her sleeping bag, finishing up the last bite of her sandwich. The treetops converged around the circle of darkening sky. The first stars were visible. She had to admit, this part of it was pretty nice.
    It couldn’t have been more than a half hour since they crawled into their sleeping bags that Beck sat up, blinked, stared straight ahead, and saw nothing. She turned her head, felt her eyes moving in their sockets, blinked to be sure her eyes were open.
    Where was she? The darkness was so total, so enveloping, that she had to tell herself she was in the woods, somewhere along Lost Creek, above a torn-up little cabin.
    She couldn’t see the cabin. She couldn’t see the creek or the trail.
    She groped for her flashlight and found it just inside her sleeping bag. Come on, come on, where’s that button?
    It clicked on and almost blinded her.
    Okay. Squinting in the sudden light, she could see the trees encircling their camping spot. She could see a few bushes, ferns, roots, and rocks, stark in the flashlight beam with nothing but bottomless black behind them.
    What happened to that wondrous place she’d seen by day, that enchanting forest where the elves and princesses and heroes had their adventures and intrigues and little bugs with fairy wings floated in the sunbeams?
    Obviously, that was then , and this was night . Suddenly she felt lost. What were the rules now?
    “What are you doing?” Reed’s voice made her jump.
    She settled, breathed, her hand over her heart. “Y-you—” She stopped without saying, scared me . “N-nothing. Just looking around.”
    “Go to sleep.”
    She clicked off the flashlight. Now the darkness was darker than before and she saw nothing but afterimages floating on her retinas.
    Go to sleep, girl, she told herself. This is night. It happens every day. No, every night. Every—what?—sixteen hours or so? No, more like eight hours that start after sixteen hours of daytime. Anyway, it only lasts so long.
    She lay back and closed her eyes.
    Snap.
    She froze, her eyes wide but unseeing. “Did you hear that?”
    Reed