Z Children (Book 1): Awakening Read Online Free PDF Page B

the pain-in-my-chest
type of fear that I’d felt so rarely in my lifetime, but on a good note, the
need to vomit from uneasiness had waned in the face of debilitating fear.
    I was only a few
feet away from my beautiful babes, when the slow-moving boy with the vacant
expression changed course, a small cry carrying to his ears and drawing his
attention. The infant in the car carrier…the tiny defenseless creature warm
beneath a soft blanket had woken up.
    The mother still
wasn’t paying attention, reading a magazine and rocking the carrier with her
foot. The boy approached, knelt on the ground and buried his face against the
blankets. The baby’s mother heard the scream though, the high-pitched yelp of
pain from her daughter. Her eyes shifted from the glossy pages of Heavenly
Hearth to the floor. Instinct took over and the woman kicked out, knocking
the boy away from the car carrier.
    When I saw the
blood painting the boy’s face, I knew it was too late. The baby wasn’t crying;
the mother was screaming. I closed the distance between my children and myself
and their position gave me a perfect line of sight. The boy had bitten through
the infant’s neck. And, as I grabbed Sophia and Marcel’s hands, I saw the boy
lunge forward and wrap his mouth around the mother’s forearm, exposed by her
short-sleeved shirt. Her cotton zip-up hoodie lay useless, draped across the
arm of her chair. Not that it would have provided much protection on. It would
have been something though…something between sharp toddler teeth and flesh.
    My father looked
as confused as I felt, his eyes wide and staring fixedly at the deranged boy
munching on the woman. “Come on, Dad!” I screamed.
    Sophia and
Marcel’s faces were warped with terror, but they allowed me to pull them along,
toward the exit and toward Bessie, the now ancient Volvo. “Grandpa!” Sophia
said loudly and tugged on my sleeve when she realized that my dad wasn’t
following us.
    “Dad!” I
screamed again; my second yell pulled him out of his motionless state. He began
to move as quickly as he could with one bad knee and a year-old hip
replacement. I yanked open the glass door and pushed Sophia and Marcel through.
“Hurry, Dad!” Behind him, the other children in the sick-area were turning
rabid, biting ferociously at anything nearby. The parents were confused, not
knowing what to do or how to respond.
    Like the
situation was just a simple case of bad behavior, they tried to hold their
children back, telling them to stop in raised, anxious voices.
    Then the screams
began, as the mothers and fathers realized that something was terribly,
terribly wrong with their children. One woman was cradling her face, a large
chunk of flesh hanging from her cheek by a single, elastic ribbon of skin. One
father was still trying to save his child, holding her against the hard, tiled
floor with strong hands as the girl thrashed wildly, growling and spitting.
That father’s voice, above all the other disturbing sounds, pierced my
consciousness. “ Tessa, Tessa, stop! It’s okay; daddy’s here. You have to
calm down!” The other guttural sounds emanating from the doctor’s office
were better suited to a zoo exhibit.
    My dad nearly
fell through the door and I closed it quickly, slamming it against a brunette
boy’s face. A trail of blood from the kid’s nose wetted the glass. He pulled
back and body-slammed against the door, his hands clawing at the see-through
surface futilely, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish out of water.
    “Sophia and
Marcel, get to Bessie!” I ran closely behind them, their six-year-old legs
pumping quickly back and forth. Marcel’s sneakers lit up with every
ground-fall, sparkling with red lights. They were his favorite sneakers. When
I’d realized how attached he’d become to the shoes, I’d run to the store and
purchased two more pairs in larger sizes so I could replace them as his feet grew
without upsetting him. You plan to do a lot of