Read Online The Survivor Chronicles (Book 2): The Divide by Erica Stevens - Free Book Online Page B

couple of steps forward and found the edge of the hole. "This way."
    He led the way across and started back down the hall. A small squeak sounded from the back. "Something just touched me," a girl gasped.
    "Wires," Xander told her impatiently.
    "It felt like a hand," she insisted.
    Xander shuddered as he thought of the mushy thing from the first room, but he continued on, refusing to even think about the possibility. The turn should be somewhere up here…
    His hand hit a wall; he jerked back as his wrist protested the abrupt contact. There shouldn't have been a wall there. He thought back over his counting, tried to recall the number of steps, and knew that they had been right. But as his hands pressed flat against the wall again, he finally accepted the awful truth that his mind had been trying to deny.
    He'd somehow gotten turned around within the hallways. He had no idea where he was right now, or where to go.

 
    CHAPTER 6
    Al
    Franklin, Mass.
    "What is that?" John demanded.
    Al could only stand and stare at the black rain that poured over the vehicles, asphalt, and washed down the road in a sweeping torrent that was already forming puddles and rivers. "The supplies!" Carl blurted.
    He turned away from the door, took the gun out from his waistband and placed it on the counter. Lee grabbed hold of Carl's arm as he stepped toward the door. "You can't go out there!"
    "The medicine is in the back of that truck, we can't let it get ruined," Carl reminded him.
    "We don't know what that is!" Lee retorted.
    "We don't know what anything is anymore. Al, give me your keys."
    Al fumbled in his pocket for the keys and pulled them free. "Maybe you should reconsider this," he told Carl as he handed them over.
    Carl fleetingly met his gaze before taking the keys. "I have thought about it. I'm not robbing anymore stores any time soon, and I'm not letting everything we have go to waste. John?"
    John hesitated before giving a brief bow of his head and placing his gun on the counter. "Yeah, whatever."
    Lee grabbed hold of Riley's arm when she placed her rifle down and unstrapped the belt at her waist. "Riley come on."
    "They're going to need help Lee," she told him as she removed her arm from his grasp and handed him the belt. Her large blue eyes drifted toward the door before coming back to him. "Carl's right, we can't let it all be for nothing."
    Lee shook his head as he released her. "I'll go with you."
    "No, stay, if something… if that rain is wrong somehow, in more than the obvious way, someone has to find Xander and Bobby. You're the only other one that has any idea where to look."
    "He'll kick my ass if something happens to you, let me go."
    "No. I'm faster and you know it. We're wasting time arguing, I'm going."
    Lee opened his mouth to protest, but he closed it again and gave her a brisk nod. Carl and John already had the door open and were waiting for her under the overhang. Riley swallowed nervously as she stepped through the door to join them. The scent of the rain hung heavily in the air as Al followed behind. Carl glanced at him but Al shook his head. "I have no intention of going with you, you'll move much faster without me. I'm simply curious."
    "Curiosity killed the cat," John muttered.
    "Or us," Riley said.
    Al stepped around them and hesitated before stretching his hand out and sticking it into the rain. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. For it to coat his fingers like tar, or sear through his flesh and rot his skin away like the person in the donut shop. However, it simply ran over his fingers in rivulets that left a black trail down his hand and arm as he lifted it in the air and rubbed it between his fingers. It felt like sand as he turned his hand over and brought it back from the rain.
    "At least we know it won't kill us right away," Carl said.
    "Oh so it's possibly a slow kind of death, like nuclear fallout. We'll be the ones who rot away for the next ten years instead of the ones who die instantly," John