Read Online Hive Invasion by James Axler - Free Book Online Page A

carotid artery. “She’s dead. I’m sorry.”
    “No! No! No! No!” The other man crawled over to his dead woman and cradled her in his arms. “We were leaving, gonna make a new life...” He looked at the ceiling and screamed, “We were going! We would have left you alone! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” Mildred was already preparing a small tranquilizer shot, one of the precious few she had, and stabbed it into the man’s arm as his screams faded into loud sobs. The man didn’t notice, just cried until the drug took effect, and he slumped over into unconsciousness. When he was out, Mildred closed Sammee’s eyes, removed the jacket from under her head and covered her with it.
    For a moment, no one moved. Then Ryan spoke. “What the hell’s going on here?”
    “Let me down and I’ll tell ya.” With both of the jumpsuited people out of commission, the blonde fist fighter had calmed down a bit.
    “All right—just remember who has all the blasters.” When she nodded, Ryan carefully lowered her to the floor.
    Tully straightened her clothes and walked back to her partner before saying anything. “You know I’m Tully, and this here’s Latham.” She nodded at her bearded companion. “We’re part of a group heading west. We come from south of the Lachan Mountains, but over the past few years the barons over there have been gettin’ more and more greedy, putting folks off their land, and killin’ them that don’t go peaceful. When we had enough, we headed west. Heard of plenty of good land out there, with few people to bother us. We’re just lookin’ to settle down somewhere and farm and live without any trouble.”
    Ryan nodded. He’d heard this story many times before. Tales of some sort of fabled Eden were a dime a dozen—and worth just about as much, too. “Go on.”
    “I will, but first...” Tully rummaged in her pack and pulled out a metal canteen. Opening it, she took a drink, then offered it to Ryan. “You all look pretty dry.”
    Ryan slowly reached for it, trying not to betray his eagerness. “Thanks.” He forced himself to take one mouthful—even though every last inch of him cried out to drain the entire container—then handed it to Krysty. “One swallow each. Jak, have Ricky bring Doc in here.”
    While he instructed the others, Tully talked quietly with her companion, who grudgingly surrendered his canteen to Ryan and the others. Each of them took a second, precious gulp of the flat, metallic-tasting water, savoring it as if it were the finest predark liquor.
    “We’d encountered another dust storm like the one outside a few days ago, and hunkered down in a ville a few miles east of here. That’s when we were attacked—” Tully nodded at the sleeping man and his dead companion “—by these folks.”
    Jak frowned. “Not seem like much threat. Chill and keep movin’.”
    The man called Latham snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw them in action. These two—” he waved at their prisoner and the corpse “—don’t even come close. Can’t put them down, not easily.... They take a shitload of damage and just keep comin’.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “They’re...different. They all move and fight together, like...ants or somethin’. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know I never seen humans actin’ that way before.”
    “Anyway, they first struck as the storm was dyin’, and carried off a half dozen of our people,” Tully said. “Came back a few nights later—and our own people were among the force hitting us.”
    Latham stared at the ground, and Tully paused for a moment as she glanced at him, then shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it. We had to—had to chill them that we’d called our own just a couple days earlier...before they did the same to us.”
    Ryan exchanged a glance with Krysty and J.B. Through their travels, they’d encountered many strange and terrible sights, so this one wasn’t that far-fetched. A