He drew her closer until she was leaning across him, her arm over his head. Then he opened his mouth…and bit her. She gasped as his teeth broke through her skin. Blood welled as the icy teeth sank deep. Dull eyes looked through her as the dead man chewed on her forearm.
She went crazy, struggling to break free. She must’ve twisted in the right way, because after a moment, she felt herself moving more easily. The next second, she was free.
He sat up, following her progress. She heard noises all around the lab now, echoing off the shadowed walls. She looked around in a panic. Other bodies were rising all around the makeshift morgue.
“How in God’s name…?” She gasped, clutching her bleeding arm to her chest as six tall bodies slid off the laboratory tables to stand in the dim, chilled room. She was so scared, she nearly wet her pants. The fear gave her a spike of clarity. She had to get out of there.
She ran for the door. Hands grabbed at her lab coat. She stumbled but caught herself before she could fall to the cold floor. She let her arms slip backward so the oversized lab coat came off, held in those strong hands that had come at her out of the darkness. She had no idea what had gone wrong with the experiment, but she wasn’t about to stick around to ask questions. These guys were huge. Big Marines who were easily twice her size. And they didn’t seem friendly. In fact, they kept grabbing at her.
If she could just get to the door. She ran, dodging and weaving around the tables and the reaching arms. They tried to grab the jacket she’d worn under the oversized lab coat, but they had a hard time getting hold of the slippery nylon fabric, thank goodness.
She crashed through the door, running for her life. She had to get help. She had to rouse the entire team. She had to get the MPs and the Marines and hell, the National Guard if she could, to stop these guys.
She turned to look over her shoulder just once as she ran into the fringe of trees on the heavily wooded outskirts of the base. What she saw chilled her to the bone. In the dark of the night, she could see the dim, yellow, rectangular glow of the open doorway. Outlined there were the hulking shapes of dead men. The dead Marines were following her path outdoors at a slow, steady, lurching pace.
BRAVA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2010 Kensington Publishing Corp.
“Naughty but Nice” copyright © 2010 Donna Kauffman
“All I Want for Christmas” copyright © 2010 Cindy Roussos
“Tattoos and Mistletoe” copyright © 2010 Susan Lyons
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-6252-3
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