I was ashamed by the shaking that rattled through me. My teeth chattered. I had lost my mother, I had lost Cade, I had seen far more of these things than I cared to recall, but for some strange reason I was shaking so badly I could hardly stand. What I had just witnessed had rattled me so much I was afraid I might actually piss my pants.

   It had looked so human ,so eerily childlike. And what it had done, well what it had done was pulverize Sarah’s pretty face with the most disgusting thing I had ever seen before. Even from my distant position I could see there was nothing left to her. Tears choked me as I realized that her own mother wouldn’t have been able to recognize the smashed mess before us.

   “It’s ok Bethy.” Bret’s voice trembled as he spoke the words. I wondered briefly if he believed them. I didn’t. “It’s ok.”

   I swallowed heavily, I wanted to sit. I couldn’t. I had to stay strong; I could not let them know how disturbed I had been by what had just happened. I had to stay on my feet. My hand shook as I slipped the gun back into the waistband of my jeans. I hated the cowardice that the trembling revealed, but I still did not have complete control over my body yet. “No,” I disagreed. “It’s not. It hasn’t been in a long time, and it never will be again.”

   It was the first time I had ever expressed that thought out loud. The first time I had truly acknowledged my own growing doubts and fears to anyone else. As I met Bret’s clear green eyes I realized that the worst part was that ever optimistic, endearing, and loving Bret believed it too.

CHAPTER 2

   Darnell nudged the edge of the dead thing with the toe of his boot. The girl it had pretended to be was completely gone. It was nearly opalescent again, almost the color of a jellyfish except for the blood it had managed to suck out of Sarah before dying. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Sarah’s ruined face again. She had been a pretty woman with a bright smile and dark hazel eyes. All of that was gone now, there was little left to identify her by. It was just too awful. It could have been any of us; Sarah had just had the misfortune of being nominated to go first.

   The creature slumped back to the ground, the tentacle flopping uselessly back as Darnell dropped it. “We should get going,” Darnell said softly. “Private Price give me a hand with the body.”

   Private Lloyd Price looked just as shaken and horrified as I felt. His smattering of reddish freckles was stark against the sharp pallor of his drained skin. His clear blue eyes were wide and rolling behind his glasses, his nearly orange hair was standing on end in a thousand different directions. He wasn’t much older than me, nineteen, twenty at most. And it was very obvious that he did not want to touch Sarah’s body; that this was not what the young private had signed up for when he enlisted. I didn’t blame him in the least. I didn’t want to leave her here but if Darnell had asked me to help him I probably would have thrown up.

   “How did it do that?” Darnell’s dark eyes slid toward me; there was no answer in his hard gaze. My heart was hammering, my palms were sweating; I couldn’t believe I was about to say what I was going to say. “We should bring it back with us.”

   “Are you crazy?” Bret demanded.

   I held Darnell’s gaze, not at all eased by the growing admiration for me I saw blooming in his eyes. I didn’t want to touch either one of the dead bodies, but we couldn’t leave Sarah behind, and this was the first opportunity we’d had to be able to study one of these creatures. Dr. Bishop would be pissed if we didn’t seize it.

   I glanced between the two broken bodies, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to Sarah. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. She had been a good person, and now she was gone. Though the thought of touching the creature before me was repugnant, I simply could nottouch Sarah.

   Bending down I seized hold of the mess before me. I had expected it to be slimy or mushy; I was surprised that it was neither. It was solid beneath my hands, cool, and smooth. There was something about it that it reminded me of silver, hard and cold when cooled, yet liquid and pliable when heated. I was so caught up in that realization that I hadn’t noticed Bret had also grabbed hold of the creature until he nudged me gently.

   “Come on Bethy let’s get the hell out of here.”

   I swallowed heavily and managed a small nod. Though this creature was nowhere near as large as some of the others I had seen, it was still exceptionally difficult to maneuver through the woods with its bulky weight, flopping tentacle, and insect like legs. My legs burned from exertion as we struggled to slip through the trees as quietly as possible.

   Before this war with the aliens I’d been reasonably fit, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle hauling this thing through the woods. But then again, there were many things that I wouldn’t have been able to handle before, but could now. Like a gun or scuba gear or even walking over this rough terrain carrying at least a hundred pounds of monster. My legs hurt, but I wasn’t sweating overly much, and my breathing wasn’t labored. Or at least not yet anyway.

   We reached the top of a crest, the large boat warehouse we had discovered a week ago came into view. When I had first been rescued by the ragtag group of survivors, they had been holed up in a lobster warehouse, but that had been three housings ago. We didn’t have homes anymore, we couldn’t; we just had buildings that sheltered us until it was time to move on. Time to head into areas that the aliens had already cleared of the Frozen Ones, to move further away from the dangerous zones, though I doubted there were any safe zones out there. Not anymore.

   I hated moving further away from the last place I had seen Cade, but I knew location had no meaning in my attempt to find him. For all I knew, he might not even be on this planet anymore, let alone still in the Cape Cod area. It was foolish of me to resent moving further inland, but I couldn’t stop the feeling. It was constantly with me.

   I resented being forced out of the only home I had ever known, the only place I had ever known. Even if it never could be home again. I did not kid myself into thinking that I would ever have a home again, that anything would ever be the same, but I wasn’t ready to let it all go either. I was like a stubborn child clinging to my pacifier, unwilling to relinquish it even though it was time. Everything I had ever known was gone, it was time to move on, but I was having a hard time doing so. There was no way to stop what had happened, at least not one that any of us could think of, and to stay still was to die. All we could hope for was to survive every day and to keep hold of the few loved ones we had left. I was more fortunate then most to still have Bret, and my brother and sister. There were others that still had family with them, but not many. Most had no one left. We made our own families now.

   I sighed softly as we moved slowly down the hill. The only good thing about all the moving was that Dr. Bishop had to leave behind all of the frozen bodies he’d collected. He still had one, but the roomful of unmoving people had been abandoned in the lobster warehouse. I thought I should feel more guilt over that decision, but I found there was little room for emotion, or compassion, within me anymore. Those things had to be suspended in this new and deadly world, they would eat me alive if I dwelt on them too much.