Read Online The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) by Keary Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

point, West was on his hands and knees, dry heaving.
    “Here,” I said, grabbing a shirt that was hanging out of a box.  I ripped the plastic off of it and handed it to him.  “Put this over your nose.  It will help with the smell.”
    “Thanks,” he said, his voice shaky.  He spit on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.  He climbed shakily to his feet and tied the shirt around his nose and mouth.
    “Better?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” he nodded, taking a deep breath, hands on hips.  He turned away from the body.
    “I wonder what happened to them,” I said, looking down at the dead boy once again.
    “I don’t think he’s the only body in here,” West said, shaking his head, still not looking at the boy.  “The smell is too intense to be coming from just one small kid.”
    I swore under my breath and started looking around.  I didn’t have to search for long before I found who I assumed was the mother in another alcove of boxes.  There was a hole blown through the side of her head and a handgun rested beside her.  But she also had a massive bruise mark on her decaying skin, a perfect mechanical handprint on her forearm.   
    “Shit,” I breathed.  “West!  She was infected!  Her boys could have been infected too before she shot everyone!”
    “Come on!” West said, waving toward the exit.  “We’ve got to get back to the hospital.  Avian just picked him up!”
    We darted back out of the building, gathering up the pile of supplies as we ran.  We paused outside momentarily.
    “They’ve got the car,” West said.  “And we’re, like, seventy-five miles from the hospital!”
    “Start checking vehicles,” I said, racing across the street to a parking lot.  “Maybe we’ll find something with keys.”
    “Eve,” West said as we started yanking car doors open.  “You know if that kid was infected that it’s too late for Avian.  He’ll get infected.”
    I shook my head, my jaw set hard.  “No,” I said as I checked another car.  No keys.  “There’s a chance the boy wasn’t infected.  And if it just barely happened, he won’t be able to spread the infection for a few hours.”
    But even as I made my argument, I knew it wasn’t true.  Those bodies had been dead for days, maybe even over a week.  If the kid was infected, TorBane would be fully saturated into his system.”
    “Got it!” West shouted.  He held up a pair of keys as a floor mat came tumbling out of the truck.  “Get in!”
    I hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.  I tossed our supplies in the back seat.  “You don’t know how to drive,” I said, my voice breathy.
    “Today seems like a good day to learn,” West said, shoving the key in the ignition.
    The truck clicked and sputtered.  It had been a sitting, rusting dinosaur for six years.  We’d been stupid to think any of these vehicles might start.
    “Come on!” West shouted, pounding the steering wheel.  He slammed one of the pedals with his foot and suddenly it roared to life.  “Yes!”
    “That there puts it into drive, I think,” I said, pointing to the stick on the side of the driving column.
    West yanked on it and the truck jerked backwards and slammed into the vehicle behind us.
    “Okay,” West said, shifting the stick again.  “R stands for reverse.  So D for drive?”
    “Let’s assume,” I said, my blood racing and pounding in my ears.  “Let’s go!”
    D was indeed for drive and we rocketed forward, clipping another vehicle as we swung wildly out of the parking lot and onto the street.
    “That woman was touched,” I said, bracing myself as we swerved madly.  “She had probably gone out to look for food or something when a Hunter must have found her.  West, this means they’re starting to come back into the city.”
    The speedometer crept up to eighty miles an hour as we peeled back onto the onramp.  Just as we pulled onto the freeway, there was a figure ahead of us.