Awaken the Elements (Elemental Trilogy) Read Online Free

after saying goodbye, drove to Maple Avenue while Autumn brooded over the ‘we’ Howard mentioned. Hazel lived on Oxford Circle which was right off of Maple.
                  She heard the gunfire first, noticing the zombies second. “Hazel!” she shouted, getting out of the truck. This was not a place for people to be with a virus outbreak at hand. Half the people in town were seriously messed up, and if they came into contact with the infected, they’d think it was another crackhead looking to score.
                  “Autumn, watch yourself out there,” Bud said from the truck as she got to Hazel's front door. She nodded, looking around quickly. A small Mexican man with a neck wound stumbled toward her. She pulled out her small pistol and shot it in the head without hesitating.
                  “Hazel!” She beat on the white, metal security door. “Hazel, you there?” Autumn didn’t hear Hazel’s dogs barking behind the door, or any sound at all.
                  Her heart sank, but then a small voice replied, “Autumn?”
                  She slowly opened the security door. Gun drawn and ready. At that moment, she felt like her gun-toting book idol, Leslie Miller . A small glimmer of hope broke the uneasy feeling she had in the pit of her stomach as her hand lingered on the old rusty door knob. She stopped as soon as she had the door open enough to see Hazel.
                  “Autumn?” Hazel walked a couple of steps toward her and sat down hard, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed. Autumn heard a gunshot. She turned to see her dad drop an infected that was getting a little too close to the door. Realizing she still held the knob, keeping the screen door open, she closed it.
                  Turning back to Hazel, she noticed the blood covering the floor. “Hazel, are you hurt?”
    Hazel’s eyes were glazed over when she looked up at her. She could see the first signs of shock. She had taken a First Aid class two months before. Ryan had insisted she at least know some basics. Hazel shook her head. Her long bleached hair flapped against her red tear streaked cheeks. Sitting where she was, she pointed in the direction of the hallway, the direction where the trail of blood got thicker.
                  Although she didn’t want to go, Autumn’s feet took her toward the hallway, following the trail. She slowly turned the corner and peered into Hazel’s sister’s room; nothing out of the ordinary in there. She continued following the blood trail, afraid of what she was going to see at the end. It led to Hazel’s room. The door stood ajar, and there were bloody hand prints all over it. Autumn pushed the door open the rest of the way, trying not to touch the infected blood. All you needed was a scratch to catch the infection.
                  So much blood. There was so much, for a moment her brain couldn’t see past it all. Finally she saw the bodies. Dead, bleeding, a body, everything covered in wet redness, another body. She then noticed the bloody shotgun lying on the ground. Walking into the room, she saw the bodies were missing their heads. It was Paul, Hazel’s fiancé, and her mom and dad, Autumn recognized them by Paul’s work shirt and her mom’s nurse’s uniform. The puzzle started coming together. Hazel’s mom must have gotten bit at work, but she didn't have time to go over and look for a wound. Her mind went to Ryan, and she was sad for him. Was he already infected?
                  The president’s scientists reported that a shot to the head was all that was needed to kill them. Turning, she walked out of the room, not bothering to close the door. She took a moment to wonder why it didn’t affect her like she thought it should. Hazel was still sitting in the living room sobbing quietly.
    “Hazel, where is Becky?”
                  She said nothing