Bøger af Allen R Brady

You can't go home again. Deirdre Perdaut was intrigued when she first heard this line, but lost interest when she learned it came from an old, dead white guy. Her English teacher was fond of old, dead white guys, but her History teacher confirmed they were nothing but trouble. As she huddled in the dank barn, listening to the approaching storm, Deirdre wished she had paid more attention in both classes. Surely, she reasoned, going home should be easy if you never technically left. Deirdre was already in the right place, she was just in a very wrong time. The only thing standing between the girl and her home was the trifling matter of two hundred years. Deirdre was not surprised that her current predicament came courtesy of an old, dead white guy. It was Colonel Ellsworth Fruithandler's miraculous Time Engine that had left her stranded two centuries before her birth. With both Fruithandler and his Engine gone, Deirdre was learning firsthand that Colonial America was a dangerous place for a young, friendless black girl. If she wants to go home again, Deirdre has just one task to complete. Armed with an eighth-grade understanding of physics and whatever she can scavenge from an eighteenth century farm, she needs to build a working time machine.

That thing on the porch won't go away. I called the police, but I don't think they're coming. They've got their hands full with the Manhattan quarantine, so they can't waste their time on a nothing little town like Otterkill. That means it's up to me and the neighbors, and there are fewer of us every day. Fewer of us, and more of them. Every person we lose is one more monster to deal with. The Spiller family, the folks from the Retirement Center, even the Mathises' Rottweiler are now stalking the streets, waiting for someone to get too close. A single touch is all it takes. I don't know which of my neighbors became the thing on the porch, and I suppose it doesn't matter. I've got to get out of here, but the Tarbabies are already showing up in Albany, and Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. There's nowhere left to run, and there's no point in hiding. Not when the shadows themselves are after you.

The problem keeps getting bigger. We've come a long way-six hundred miles on foot through an army of gelatinous abominations. But the Briar Patch extends all the way to the Rockies now, which means safety is still half a continent away. We're not alone. Undaunted bands of survivors continue to build walls and fortify barricades, convinced that the Briar Patch can be tamed. They're wrong, of course. The bogeymen that have overrun Ohio cannot be held at bay with locked doors. Staying alive in the Briar Patch means getting out of the way. There are others with more ambitious plans. They created the Honey Pot not just to contain the tarbabies, but to obliterate them. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, but they seem to know a lot more about the creatures than the rest of us. I hope they do, anyway. Because it looks to me like the Honey Pot is growing restless.

No one expects to leave this place alive. The Friendly Haven Assisted Living Center is supposed to be the last stop-a quiet, comfortable place to die. But death is not what the monsters outside are offering. The tarbabies will get in eventually. They always do. Keeping those shambling bags of slime from oozing through the countless cracks and seams infesting this place would require more vigilance than we can muster. The residents of Friendly Haven are old and weary, and it has been a long time since we were asked to fend for ourselves. So we can hunker down and wait for the help we know isn't coming, or we can take our chances out among the monsters. There are no heroes at Friendly Haven. But there are people who are terrified of what they will become if they fail. For what we have to do, Fear may be our last, best hope. Now that Death is no longer the worst thing that can happen to us.

That thing on the porch won't go away. I called the police, but I don't think they're coming. They've got their hands full with the Manhattan quarantine, so they can't waste their time on a nothing little town like Otterkill. That means it's up to me and the neighbors, and there are fewer of us every day. Fewer of us, and more of them. Every person we lose is one more monster to deal with. The Spiller family, the folks from the Retirement Center, even the Mathises' Rottweiler are now stalking the streets, waiting for someone to get too close. A single touch is all it takes. I don't know which of my neighbors became the thing on the porch, and I suppose it doesn't matter. I've got to get out of here, but the Tarbabies are already showing up in Albany, and Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. There's nowhere left to run, and there's no point in hiding. Not when the shadows themselves are after you.