Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance Read Online Free Page B

in the pedals of her bike and she tumbled over. When she tried to right herself, something clamped around her right ankle.
    She looked down and saw a hand sticking out of the sand. It had thin, birdlike bones covered with papery, brown skin. Trying to yank her leg back, she slipped and fell again. As she pulled away and kicked at the hand still firmly clinging to her, a body began to emerge from the sand: first an arm, then a shoulder and an eyeless skull with wispy strands of long whitish hair, then an emaciated torso that only had one partial leg attached. It writhed towards her with the black cave of its mouth open wide.
    She reached for her gun, but in the scramble to get a hold of it while keeping the monster's teeth away from her calf, she dropped it in the sand. Still kicking at the skull, she screamed and craned her neck just in time to see the double silhouette of Private Bernard and Don Milton disappearing over a dune. Like her, they had helmets on that covered their ears and muffled sound.
    With a slam of her boot, she broke free long enough to gain a couple of feet's distance, but her gun wasn't within safe reach. After getting back on her feet, she grabbed the nightstick from her other holster and brought it down on the snarling skull. That only slowed the skeletal Eater for a moment. After two more hits, she decided that it was a useless task. The bleached skull seemed to have been crystallized in the desert sun into something as hard as rock.
    She gave up on killing it and decided to outrun it. Doing quick zigzag steps, she made a move for her bike and was an inch away from the handle when another hand shot up out of the sand and grabbed for her boot. Leaping back a couple of feet to avoid it and the first Eater, she saw other disturbances under the sand between her and the bike.
    How many? She wondered as more areas of the sparkling sand began to bulge and shift. She figured the things hadn't buried themselves intentionally. They'd probably been snaking their way through the desert for weeks and had been covered by sand after last night's wind storm.
    Five, six, seven…
    No way to get back to the bike.
    She ran for the fence, spidered up the chain link, using her fingers and the soles of her boots to propel herself up the small links, and screamed for help.
    They were all onto her now. Another half dozen had joined their ranks, and some, barely more than boney torsos, began to hoist themselves up, link by link.
    Where were the guards on this side of building? Why hadn't anyone seen what was going on and alerted Bernard and Milton to come back for her? Probably asleep or on a pee break…
    She kept climbing higher and higher until she reached the razor wire on the top. There was no going through it, and even if she could make it through the sharp tangles, it was a long drop to the moat down below where she'd be shish kabob on one of the tall rebar spikes.  Alternately kicking at jaws and claw-like fingers, she moved horizontally just below the wire. She'd progressed just yards when she heard movement on the other side of her. Craning her head around, she saw three more skeletal figures advancing, cutting off her route. She was fifteen feet up, and her only choices were to drop down into the waiting mouths below or take her chances with the razor wire and the drop to the moat.
    She went up.
    Managing to part the wire with her elbows, her progress was halted when it snagged on her sleeve tearing it away. She screeched like a banshee as she kicked at the mummy head close to her dangling leg. Flakes of skin like dried clay flew through the air as she pummeled it, doing everything she could to keep its teeth from biting into her. In the scuffle, her knee veered up into the razor wire and her shorts caught on the wire. The pain barely registered as a sharp blade raked across her flesh, creating a red, oozing zipper line down her thigh.
    It was Don and the soldier that saved her. They finally noticed she was no