Stung - By Bethany Wiggins Page 0,36

thunder rumbles. I rest my hands on my knees, gasping trembling breaths of air into my lungs, and peer up at the gray sky. A drip of water splatters against my forehead. And I hear the downpour again—whether rain or feet, I can’t say, because the sky is falling, a thick, cool downpour.

Bowen swears and rams his shoulder into the door. It doesn’t budge. He does it again, throwing all of his weight into it.

“I think it’s locked,” I say. My voice trembles. He ignores me and rams his shoulder into the door a third time with no results. He groans and smacks the door with his fist.

“It’s not locked. I glued it shut so that no one else would be able to get in. But the glue should give under pressure.” Bowen tries again, but the door doesn’t move. He rubs his shoulder and curses.

The downpour is getting louder, though it isn’t raining any harder than it was a moment before. Which can mean only one thing. The beasts are closing in. My heart matches the growing throb of their footsteps, and I can see fear in Bowen’s eyes.

“We have to run,” he says. He reaches for his pack, and I grab his icy hand.

“On three, let’s do it together,” I say, turning my shoulder toward the door. He stares into my eyes for a moment and then nods.

“One, two, three,” Bowen says. I throw myself into the door, expecting it to absorb my momentum. When my shoulder hits, the door swings inward, and Bowen and I fall into the factory, our arms and legs tangled. Bowen wiggles away from me and climbs to his feet, slamming the door and sliding a metal lock into place.

I blink at the darkness. We stand in a huge empty room with one small window in the wall across from the door. The air is stale with dry heat and utterly silent.

Bowen crosses the factory to a narrow staircase in the corner, and I follow. The second level of the factory has windows as tall as me, most of them broken. Rain is blowing through them, pelting my skin, cooling my burned arms. Bowen strides to an empty window and looks out. I follow, but when I get there, he grabs me and pulls me to the side, just behind the window frame, holding my back against his chest with an arm pulled tightly around my shoulders.

“Don’t move,” he whispers against my ear. “Look.”

Thunder rumbles. The wind picks up and whips damp air into my face. The pounding deluge of summer rain swallows the sound of footsteps. Below, two blocks away, runs a large group of people. As one, they stop, fall onto hands and knees, and press their faces to the wet street.

“Are they praying?” I ask.

“Yeah, right. They can’t even talk. They’re tracking us by scent,” Bowen answers. “If they see us …” I press against him, trying to move us out of the window completely. “Just don’t move,” he whispers, tightening his hold on my shoulders.

The beasts stand and take a few steps forward, then throw themselves down onto the soaked street again. They stand once more and start running. Away from our building. Bowen sags against me, pressing his forehead on my shoulder, and lets out a deep breath of air.

“They lost the scent,” he says into my shirt. And then he laughs. He turns me to face him and grins. I can’t help but smile back. “The rain washed away the scent!” He runs his hands through his damp hair and sighs again.

I follow him back downstairs, over to the wall with the lone window. He sets his pack down. I do the same and shrug my tight, weary shoulders.

“So, now what?” I ask.

“We hide here until Sunday.”

“We’re just going to sit in this building for four days?”

“Yep. Bathroom’s over there behind that door.” He points to a wooden door that’s been taken off its hinges and propped at an angle against the wall. “It’s nothing fancy—just a bucket and a roll of toilet paper.” Bowen sits and faces the metal door we came in through, his back against the cement wall, and lays his gun in his lap. “Might as well make yourself comfortable.”

I take the sleeping bag out of my backpack, spread it over the dusty floor, and sit.

“Bowen?” I say. He looks at me. The skin under his eyes is as gray as the world, as gray as the cement wall framing him. “I don’t