Creators Read Online Free Page B

voice around me sounded muffled and far away. Out of reach.
    Get it together.
    I couldn’t be weak.
    Not now.
    Not ever.
    The pounding of feet came closer and closer to where my sister and I stood huddled against our chosen one brother-in-law. I could feel him shift next to me, turning in every direction, searching for some escape route, but from the sounds of the screams that came sporadically from around us, it didn’t sound like we had anywhere to go.
    My father had demanded that Louisa and I rest inside the perimeter of soldiers he had created. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but the weight of the past few days had caught up with me, and I had lost my battle with exhaustion. My father said we would be safe. We were surrounded by an army. An army of men and women who were now being attacked.
    “Down!” Robert hissed. I didn’t wait to be told twice. I grabbed my sister by her elbow, pulling her down hard onto the ground. “Try not to make any noise. Try not to move,” Robert whispered, assessing the situation that I couldn’t even see.
    My stomach pressed against the uneven, rocky dirt, and the ground dug painfully into my wound. I grunted and lifted my head, resting on my elbows to squint, but I could only faintly see the shadows of men and women darting here and there across my line of vision.
    The screaming had become less frequent, replaced with the rhythm-less beat of yelled commands and popping guns. Louisa pressed her forehead into the dirt, whimpering softly. The only music the world seemed to play anymore—a symphony of war and death. The song played on repeat; the world a broken record player no one knew how to fix. But there was something off about the song. Something different. A new instrument added to the mix, one I didn’t recognize. Guttural. Slow. Drawn out. Raspy. And it was getting closer.
    “What’s out there?” I asked, my voice panicked. I cringed at how loud and desperate it sounded.
    “Quiet!” Robert commanded.
    The sound was getting closer. “Sir! I think I see them. They’re safe,” a voice I vaguely recognized yelled, and then the soldier was running toward us.
    “Cover her eyes,” Robert said to me, nodding toward my sister. I turned to find her looking up toward the man who claimed to be coming to our rescue. I furrowed my brow, trying to make sense of Robert’s words. What was about to happen?
    “Damn it, Tess! Do it! Now!”
    Before I could reach my hand over, Lockwood covered my sister’s eyes with one hand while placing a protective arm around her.
    That’s when I saw the first one.
    The thing Robert knew my sister wouldn’t be able to handle seeing.
    It was worse than the deformed easterner I had seen months ago in these very woods. I didn’t even know what to call the creature that sprang on top of the soldier, tackling him to the ground effortlessly, the soldier’s bones cracking and snapping as he fell like a tower of blocks knocked over by a vengeful child.
    It wasn’t just that the creature was deformed. Appearance-wise he wasn’t much different from the deformed chosen ones we had stumbled across from the Eastern sector. Enormous in stature, the creature lacked any of the beauty that made up the design of the chosen ones flashed across the television screens of my childhood—lavish and grand promises that an age of innocence was about to begin. It had been anything but that. Forced into compounds. Girls used and abused to suit the council’s needs.
    The beauty of the chosen ones was a lie. At least most of them. James’s outer beauty was nothing compared to the soul that lived inside of him—a soul he insisted he didn’t have.
    But as the council became more and more sure they had properly subdued the naturals, they must have followed the lead of the eastern sector—mass producing killing machines to fight the war that continued to plague our borders, no longer caring about fooling naturals into believing these angelic, god-like humans were