Grace Lost (The Grace Series) Read Online Free Page A

ventured on.  I would
drive while he navigated, even before I was old enough to legally sit behind
the wheel.  He plotted the course with a black Sharpie pen, and then
downed the last gulp of his beer. As he set the empty can on the table we heard
the loud shattering of glass breaking somewhere below us.  Instinctively
we both stood, and my wooden kitchen chair fell over with a thud.
    “Get to the garage, Zoe, NOW!” yelled
Boggs as he grabbed the atlas from the table.
    I was frozen in place from fear,
and he gave me a shove toward the cold concrete room that housed our mode of
escape.  The sound of the dead grew louder, moans rising from the
basement.  The accompanying stench filled the house, causing us to move
faster to the waiting vehicle.  Boggs directly behind me, I stumbled on
the carpet that was fraying at the threshold to the garage.  We tumbled to
the concrete floor in a heap, the sound of danger close behind.  The
guttural moans were terrifying.  Boggs was on his feet before I could gain
my own footing, so he grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me upright.  Boggs
had readied his handgun as I ran for the closest car door, the passenger side,
and slid in.  I could see in the side mirror that the first of the
creatures had reached the door from inside the house.  The sound of the
Kahr expelling a bullet was deafening, and the corpse was launched backward
into three more of the creatures.  I covered my ears with my hands and
screamed.  I felt a whoosh of air as Boggs scrambled into the driver’s
seat, and felt the car shake from his weight.  I kept my ears covered and
my eyes shut, trying to crawl into an internal black hole.
    The engine roared to life as the
creatures slammed into the rear of the car in pursuit of us.  I felt the
SUV lurch forward and closed my eyes tighter as I felt the impact of metal
against metal when Boggs drove into the large aluminum door his parents had
installed only a couple of years back. We were nearly blinded by sunlight, our
eyes having become accustomed to the darkness inside the house.

Chapter
2
               
 
    “Zoe, take the gun.”  My
hands were still over my ears.  Boggs was hurriedly driving down the
gentle slope of the driveway, and became irritated.  He smacked my left
shoulder and yelled.  “ God damn it, Zoe! Take the gun! ”
    I looked at him, in shock by both
his tone with me and from the unreal events of the morning.  He reached
over and set the gun in my lap, and I placed my left hand over it.  Tears
were streaming down my face.  Boggs slammed his fist against the steering
wheel with a sound of frustration deep in his throat.
    Turning to the
right, away from the earlier car crash, Boggs headed down the road while I sat
useless.    I was trying to
hold in my sobs before I lost all control.  I wiped my eyes with an old
tissue that was shoved between the center console and the driver’s seat. 
Boggs slammed his fist into the steering wheel again, causing fresh tears on my
part.  I wasn’t familiar with this side of him and it scared me.
    “Zo, don’t cry.  I just need
to think.  I need to get you out of here safely.”
     I reached forward to turn
the radio on, but was met with a broken knob. 
    “The damn radio’s broken,” said
Boggs in a frustrated tone.  “Only the CD player works. Fuck.  We
need to know what the hell is going on.  Damn it.”  He beat the
steering wheel with his fist again.
    I dabbed at my tears some more,
and turned away from him to look out the window as we drove.  We had
cleared our small neighborhood and were headed south along a roadway that
served a handful of farms.  The road was oddly absent of vehicles, and our
path was clear.  To the east was a hay field that had recently been harvested. 
Rolled bales covered in white plastic dotted the hillside.  We continued
to drive in silence, the shock of events causing me to tune out Boggs as he
mumbled under his breath.
    Not wanting to face