U.G.L.Y Read Online Free PDF

explore the wonders of the universe. It was a quiet job, I worked alone most of the time, but for the moment it was good. After the turn my life had taken I needed to recover and I needed peace and that is what I had on the mountain.
    I f it hadn't been for my breakdown and subsequent move into the hills to get closer to work, my family would have been living in a densely populated city when the first wave broke. We lived in a neighborhood that had fallen. I was positive I would have died, and worst of all my children would have died a horrible death. Fate is a funny thing, what had turned out to be the worst experience of my life absolutely saved the lives of my children. From that perspective, every moment of horror and pain was worth it.
         It had been months since the first wave had settled down. T he severely ill were filling makeshift beds in overflowing hospitals and prisons and authorities had begun transporting patients to overflow sites. One of these sites was located in the high dessert past Victorville , California .
    Patients were being moved using every means of travel imaginable. Airlifts were used for the more critically ill, but most were moved using passenger trains where they could and buses in most cases. Massive convoys of buses were traveling daily on what were by now mostly clear freeways. Charter buses, school buses, military transports, ambulances, vans, and large passenger cars and trucks were all being used to move the sick. One of these buses didn't make it to its destination. That bus introduced me and my sleepy little town to the horror of the second wave.
         On a cloudy morning a converted charter bus left a prison near the city of Fontana , California . Converted into a medical transport, the charter bus housed bunks, or racks similar to those used on old naval ships . These racks were mounted three high on each side of the bus with barely enough room to walk between them. They were loaded with critically ill patients.
    As the bus drove towards the I215 freeway, a little girl who had fallen ill a month before was barley conscious and tucked away in the back of the bus on a bottom rack. She was fading quickly and floated in and out of consciousness. Inside her brain, the fungus was nearing its final stages of taking complete control of her mind .
    She turned her head to look out the window and watched the mountains pass as the bus headed north. I t was a dreary day, and had begun to rain. She liked the rain and the way the dirt smelled after a storm had just passed through. She closed her eyes, imagined playing in the mountains and a sadness overwhelmed her. A tear rolled down her cheek. S he saw a bright flash and then darkness. She was gone now, her conscious mind had shut down and a little girl named Megan Davis faded from the earth.
         Now a mindless shell with one desire, to feed, woke. I t opened its eyes and was filled with an overwhelming rage and desire to eat. Confused at first, it didn't see the patients close to it, its focus was immediately on the only human it saw. I t stared up the narrow isle at the driver, closer still at the drivers neck and it began to drool.
    D ropping out of its rack, it began moving forward towards the driver, slowly at first then faster and faster. It hit the driver with enough force to knock him into the windshield which disoriented him at first. Grabbing his hair, i t pushed his head over to the left with enough force to crack his neck.
    E agerly it sank its teeth into his neck, biting down hard it pulled back, taking a mouthful of skin and muscle with it. Tendons hung from between its teeth and an arch of blood, under some considerable pressure, sprayed across the windshield. Pulsing red fluid sprayed time after time until the driver hunched over the steering wheel.
    By now the bus had left the freeway and had been heading west on a small county highway that took them within five miles of town . When the driver was killed the bus was