It was the creatures.
Alessa’s brain kicked into overdrive, everything slowing down around her as she considered her options.
She could flee, run back to Isaac and Janie and the safety of the numbers huddled in the next car. But to do so she’d need to squeeze through the narrow passageway flanked by the cargo lining the door and fight her way back through those clunky latches. Turning her back to these beasts would be suicide – and if she got trapped with them in close quarters she was done.
She could call for help, hope someone in the next car over would hear. But she could barely hear her own thoughts over the bellowing of the frigid wind. What were the chances anyone would come to her rescue? Plus, she’d be revealing her position to the creatures. If they hadn’t noticed her yet, she might still be able to take them unawares.
That was it – Alessa needed to get them before they got her.
She ducked back against the wall and scanned her surroundings for some kind of weapon that would give her a little more distance than her knife.
There – an old broomstick. She snatched it up and snapped the light wood across her knee, leaving a jagged point at one end.
Hoisting her makeshift spear to her shoulder, Alessa crept forward, her footsteps soft and silent under the crashing of the wind. She was only steps from the back of the car now – the creature must be just beyond this final stack of cartons.
Alessa kept her distance. She knew how fast these things were, and she needed enough time to thrust the spear ahead of her in case it attacked.
Suddenly, the beast revealed itself with one tentative step out from behind the box. It stood at least six feet tall, muscular and strapping, its posture crouched but upright, like a person – though there was nothing human about that face.
The creature eyed her curiously with huge, swollen eyes, bulging three times the size that any person’s should be, as if they were pushed out of its head from behind. Its mouth hung open limply, revealing a bevy of sharp, jagged, spiky teeth. And where there should have been ears and hair, there were only shriveled lumps of flesh and scaly, blistering skin.
Every impulse in Alessa’s body screamed at her to attack, to take this infinitesimal scrap of an opportunity to put her enemy down. But she froze, the shaft of her weapon clenched in her fist, her lungs unable to take a breath.
Two images forced their way into her mind – the very same ones, in fact, that had pierced themselves in her brain earlier that day:
Her own face, laughing; and a younger version of Isaac, dazed beside his overturned bicycle.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Alessa whispered to herself, an incoherent muttering prayer as she sunk to her knees, her spear clattering to the floor beside her.
She simply couldn’t articulate it any other way. Her eyes had to be lying, her head had to be wrong.
Because if they weren’t, what they were showing her was unspeakable, the nightmare of a nightmare come horrifyingly true.
Even without the visions in her head – even before she realized it’d been him beside her the entire journey – she would have known, would have recognized the piercing blue of those eyes anywhere, the mirror of his brother’s.
The monster standing before her was Joe.
A NOTE TO READERS
Dear Reader,
First off, thank you SO much for investing your time in the Stitch Trilogy. You are the number one reason I write. There’s nothing I’d love more than to hear your thoughts on Alessa and Isaac’s adventures, so please be sure to swing by my website, www.samanthadurante.com, to stay in touch and catch up with lots of great extra content that will tide you over until the conclusion of the series!
I also wanted to take a moment to share with you something I learned since becoming an author. As you may know, the Stitch Trilogy is my first foray into publishing fiction, though I spent many years before that (27, to be exact) as a reader of fiction. And one thing in all those years that I never realized is how much power I had as a reader to make my favorite authors a success.
As I’ve recently discovered, us authors are wholly dependent on you, the readers, to make or break our careers. I’ve been blessed to find a vocal group of fans who have shouted from the rooftops about Stitch, on their blogs and Facebook pages, their Twitter and Goodreads accounts, and the reviews they’ve so generously plastered all over the internet. And with their help, I’ve been able to reach many other readers who would otherwise have never come across my work. (If you are one of these people, THANK YOU!)
The fact of the matter is that an author – especially an independent author like me – is only one person. We can write ‘til the cows come home, but without a strong community of readers to support us, our work would never get off the ground. And this is something I never realized as a reader, the opportunity I held in my hands to contribute to something much larger than myself by sharing the joy I felt in reading.
I thought I was just one of thousands, that my voice was inaudible under the din of mass media and professional critics. But in this age of social media and global communication, that simply isn’t true. Only a very small percentage of books are ever featured in a magazine or on TV, and the rest – particularly those without the marketing budget of a major publishing house behind them – never reach the millions of people who would love them if only they knew of their existence. And that includes many, many great books.
So if you enjoyed Shudder – or any book, for that matter – take a moment to tell someone about it. Write a quick review, send a link to a friend, tweet a short message to give the author a shout-out.
Trust me – we’re listening. And knowing that you appreciated our work will undoubtedly make any author’s day.
Thank you for all of your support,
Samantha
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Deep, thank you for playing so many roles in my life, from best friend to husband to editor. Your critique has contributed much to this series, and you’re the only one who will call me out when I’ve written something ridiculous or cheesy. Thank you for all of your support, in my writing, and in life.
To my beta readers, thank you for your patience and undying encouragement in getting through the early drafts. Your keen eyes for typos and plot inconsistencies are much, much appreciated, and your enthusiasm for the story even more so. I couldn’t have done it without you.
To Gio, my little feline love, thank you for being my constant companion and devoted assistant. Even though you assist most in causing me backaches by leaving no room on my lap for the computer, there’s no other companion I’d rather have for the many long hours of writing we’ve shared.
And finally, to the readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you, a hundred thousand times over. I’m beyond honored that you chose to spend your time with Alessa and Isaac. Thank you for giving me someone to share their story with.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samantha Durante lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, Sudeep, and her cat, Gio. Formerly an engineer at Microsoft, Samantha left the world of software in 2010 to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and a lifelong love of writing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, Samantha is currently working full time for her company Medley Media Associates as a freelance business writer and communications consultant. The Stitch Trilogy is her debut series.
Visit www.samanthadurante.com to join the Stitch community and sign up for updates about upcoming Stitch Trilogy releases.
Read on for a Sneak Preview of
STUCK
The electrifying final installment of the Stitch Trilogy…
EPILOGUE: TRAITOR
It wasn’t working. Lizzie had tried for two solid months to convince someone – anyone – that they should consider a peace with Paragon. But no one wanted to listen. They just wanted blood.
On the one hand, Lizzie understood – the Engineers had made some choices that were… questionable, to
say the least. Secrecy, lies, mind control through the stitching and the drugs, mass murder…
But that was also reductive. The Engineers had done some terrible things, yes – but had they really had a choice? Lizzie didn’t want to hear it at first, either, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed that the Engineers just did what needed to be done. Everyone was going to die anyway. Instead, the Engineers had saved the entire human species from itself, had given humanity a place where they could live comfortably, securely, and in harmony with the world around them for a long and prosperous future.
And of course the people weren’t satisfied with what they’d come up with. No one was ever satisfied. But the Engineers had only tried to make it work, even if their methods were misguided. Yes, they were controlling the populace against their will, but that was only for their own good.
Rubbing one of the scars on her temple, Lizzie remembered what the people did when left to their own devices – remembered their true nature. The Engineers were only protecting them from themselves. They really did mean well.
And at least the Engineers weren’t ruling the people through fear. They’d given them food, entertainment – even drugs – to make them happy. What more could anyone want?
The rebels thought they wanted freedom, thought they wanted a say. But they’d all seen what had become of the “free” world – war, poverty, devastation. If that was the price of freedom, it was something Lizzie wasn’t sure she wanted.
The only way they could avoid the same fate as their predecessors was to give up that supposed “freedom,” put aside their individual aspirations, and work together toward a collective good. They needed to put society before themselves, for once.
And that was exactly what the Engineers were proposing. They were giving everyone an opportunity to try something different, something new and hopefully better. And sure, they’d made mistakes – the Engineers were only human, after all. But they’d owned up to those mistakes, and were still trying to set them right.
The same couldn’t be said for the rebels.
For eight weeks now, the rebel force had been diligently toiling away under Regina’s command, dashing out to the woods and the city for training expeditions, plotting and scheming to take Paragon down; each tiny cog churning away in the well-oiled machine of war her mother had built.
And not one of them would stop for even a moment to consider what they were actually fighting against. What would happen when they returned to Paragon to fight? How much collateral damage would they inflict?
How could the rebels attack the city, knowing full well that innocents would die along with Paragon’s leaders? The others may not realize it, but Lizzie knew that that could be utterly detrimental to their future, to their viability as a species. Everyone in Paragon had been chosen. Everyone deserved to live. Everyone needed to live.
And there were other considerations as well. Whispers raged throughout Raptor about the monsters that plagued the soldiers on their missions into the woods, along with horrifying stories from civilians who’d witnessed what had happened the few times those monstrous things had somehow gotten inside Paragon’s gates. Would the rebels tear down Paragon’s walls and set those harrowing creatures loose on the compound?
There was too much at stake. Lizzie had to do something to stop it. But how?
She’d tried to reason with the rebels, tried to make them see sense – but they were too enamored by Regina’s visions of vengeance to listen.
No, reason never stood a chance against her mother’s machinations. Lizzie had spent her entire life watching Regina weave her tangled webs, somehow manipulating everyone around her to do exactly as she wanted, half the time without them even realizing it.
Regina had a way – that much Lizzie had to admit. It’d driven her mad as a child, watching everyone bend to her mother’s will. Somehow Lizzie herself had been immune to Regina’s charms – she guessed she simply knew her mother too well, knew her in a way the guarded rebel leader never allowed of anyone else. That was the magic of being a daughter – her mother couldn’t hide from her if she tried.
But how could Lizzie ever convince the rebels to return to the place that her mother had so skillfully twisted them against?
There was only one way she could think of – she would have to unmask Regina for the master puppeteer she was.
In Regina’s exploits to keep the rebels under her wing, there was one thing she hadn’t considered, one loyalty she’d never questioned: Lizzie’s. And that would be her downfall.
Lizzie loved her mother – she truly did – but the Engineers had helped her see that sometimes things were more important than one’s individual allegiances. Sometimes a person had to give up what they most cared for to do the right thing – just as all the Engineers had done. And Lizzie was willing to sacrifice her mother’s love if it meant the survival of the human race.
Lizzie knew Regina was lying to the rebels. She knew Regina was using their fear of the virus to manipulate them into fighting instead of fleeing. And Lizzie was going to expose her deceit.
Lizzie had overhead Alicia and Regina discussing the dying infants. Even though Regina kept warning the rebels about the virus, Lizzie knew Regina suspected that they were all immune. But she’d convinced Alicia to keep quiet about this, claiming that it wasn’t safe to tell everyone until they knew for sure it was true.
Really, though, Lizzie knew Regina had her own reasons. If the rebels understood that they had a choice – that they could be safe from the virus away from Raptor, and Paragon, and all of it – some of them might just decide to leave. Regina needed to make sure that didn’t happen – and so she’d kept her suspicions about immunity hidden from the rebels.
But Lizzie was going to tell. And once she did, she would take the disillusioned rebels with her back to Paragon and put this war to an end.
There was only one person standing in her way – Isaac.
For now, though, that was under control. Lizzie had something over Isaac, a bargaining chip he wasn’t willing to risk.
Isaac had heard the Developer’s revelations, and he’d quickly realized the same thing Lizzie had: that there was something special about the girl. She was too young to have received the vaccine through the civil service program as the Developer had described, and yet somehow she’d survived anyway.
Lizzie had not told Regina that the Engineers were behind the virus, and she had no intentions of doing so. She knew Regina would only use the information to fuel the rebels’ fire.
But Isaac couldn’t keep a secret like that for long, Lizzie knew. And if he told the rebels, they wouldn’t care what Regina had done – they’d want retribution, and Lizzie’s plans to save them all would be ruined.
So she’d made sure that Isaac had understood what would happen if Regina found out about the girl and the vaccine.
Knowledge of the vaccine would only confirm Regina’s suspicions about immunity. And it wouldn’t be long before she realized that the vaccine didn’t work on the very young – Regina would surmise that obviously that would have been the first thing the Engineers tried. And so she’d recognize that they needed something else to survive, a true cure to save the little ones from a horrible death.
And the child was the key to that cure.
“If you don’t want to see her turned into a science experiment,” Lizzie had warned, “You’ll keep quiet about what you know.”
Isaac had agreed, reluctantly. But she knew it was only a matter of time before his conscience got the better of him.
The problem was, Isaac wouldn’t stay silent for long. He’d probably already told Alessa – and Alessa would have told her sister. The threat to the girl would convince Isaac to keep them in line for now. But not forever.
And Lizzie couldn’t let the child fall into Regina’s hands. If she was going to turn the girl over to anyone, it would be the Engineers. They were the ones with the knowledge and equipment to do this right, to find a real cure. They
were humanity’s only hope.
But the minute those three – Isaac, Alessa, and Janie – realized that Lizzie intended to bring the girl back to Paragon, they would spill everything they knew. Then there would be no chance for peace. Paragon would be forced to crush the rebellion. And the entire survival of their species could be put in jeopardy.
Lizzie couldn’t let that happen. She would turn the rebels against Regina, and she would deliver them – and the girl – to the Engineers. Regardless of what it cost her personally, she would do her part to ensure a future for her people.
But first, she needed to get rid of Isaac.
Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) Page 26
