Intruders: The Invasion: A Post-Apocalyptic, Alien Invasion Thriller (Book 1) by Tracy Sharp Page B

This little
jaunt was an exploratory trip, to see how close the reptiles were living to the
cabin.
    My body trembled as I looked the ground over. Snow blanketed
the entire area. The snow had come again overnight, dropping another several
inches on top of the foot that the storm had dropped on us. None of it had
melted.
    The holes could be anywhere. One wrong step and we could
simply vanish through the ground.
    I stepped lightly and carefully, and Hank did the same. He
seemed to know what the point of the walk was, which didn’t surprise me. He
knew what the deal was.
    My eyes continuously scanned the ground, the trees around
us. Every few minutes I stopped, searching the snow for imperfections; dents,
holes, uneven snow that would suggest a sinkhole. I didn’t know if the reptiles
covered the entrances to their underground structures or not.
    If I had a slight idea how far underground the structures
were, I could figure out more about how they were dug out.
    But the only way for me to find out would be to find an
entrance and to venture down into it during daylight hours. I felt secure in my
theory that the reptiles couldn’t take the daylight, which is why they never
emerged after daybreak. Otherwise, it would be a free for all reptiles during
daylight hours.
    Instead, they were hiding underground.
    What the hell was under there? Did they nest? Sleep? Where
were the girls and women they’d dragged under there, kept separately from the
reptiles or were they in the same areas?
    I imagined what it would be like for those women. Cold,
dark, barely able to breathe, if at all, with the alien monsters scuttling
around. The thought sent a wave of terror washing over me, and a chilled sweat
broke out over my back.
    Hank moved nearer to me, nudging my hand.
    “I’m okay, Hank.” I kept my voice low, almost a whisper.
“Just a little freaked out. But we can’t just hide in the cabin, can we? We
have to find out what happened to my sister. To Luka.”
    His ears lifted at Luka’s name, and his eyes widened and
searched my face.
    I pointed to the snow beneath us. “She’s down there
somewhere. We need to find them.”
    He sniffed at the ground, then sat and waited for me to
start moving again.
    Suddenly he jumped up and turned around, snarling.
    My heart froze. I turned.
    A deadie stumbled through the snow toward us.
    “Stay here, Hank. I’ve got this.” I pulled off the ski glove
and shoved it in my jacket pocket as I walked through the deep snow, still
keeping my steps as light as I could, and pulled the claw hammer from my
backpack. It was sticking out by the handle for easy access.
    The woman had probably been in her sixties when she’d died.
Her white hair stuck out around her head in messy curls. Her eyes were milky
white in her pasty face as she approached me, her hands reaching for me. She’d
been on the heavier side, and in death she had trouble making her way through
the drifts with her bulk. Her flannel nightgown billowed around her.
    I swung the hammer back and hit her through the top of her
head. She didn’t drop. The claw stuck, but I was able to yank it out and hit
her again, for good measure.
    A high pitched shriek sounded to my left, and I looked up to
see a boy of about fourteen heading toward me. He was considerably quicker and
more nimble than the woman, and he climbed over the snow.
    Hank snarled louder, coming up behind me.
    “Don’t bark, Hank. Okay?”
    The hammer was stuck in the woman’s head, and I didn’t have
time to fool with it. I shoved her away. No easy task. She was dead weight ---
literally. She stumbled back, her eyes rolling, her dead brain puzzled by the
sudden short circuit caused by the claw of my hammer.
    I pulled the knife from my boot, but by then the kid was
almost on top of me. His teeth were bared, blood and gore stuck between them.
He made growling sounds, and came at me like he meant it. His swinging arms
knocked the knife from my hand.
    I jumped back, trying not to