Free The Lola Chronicles (Book 2): A Day Without Dawn by Jillian Eaton

eyes.
    “She bit me. On the hand. Here.” I lifted my right arm. “I didn’t know it then, but when one of them bites you they transmit their ability to heal. The next day we when we tried to leave town my dad swerved to avoid a giant hole in the middle of the road going sixty miles an hour. I went through the windshield and walked away without a scratch.”
    Hunter nodded slowly. “When we tried to leave we ran into the same thing. They’ve cut off every exit coming into and going out of Revere.”
    “They planned for everything,” I said bitterly.
    “Not everything.” Hunter reached out and took my hand. His thumb inadvertently brushed against the spot where my scars had been before he linked his fingers with mine and squeezed tight. “They never planned for us.”
     
    Hunter promised not to tell anyone about my sordid past, especially after I told him that the drinker who bit me was the same one I killed.
    I trusted him to keep quiet. Not that I really had much of a choice.
    When we go back to the gym we told everyone about Mrs. Wallace. There were a few who still didn’t want to believe us, but for the most part they took the news that our teachers were turning into crazy-eyed monsters who could attack in broad daylight surprisingly well.
    That night, after stuffing my face with three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (don’t judge) I barricaded myself in the locker room with the rest of the girls.
    A middle school locker room would never have been my first choice for a hideout, but aside from the overwhelming smell of cucumber melon body wash (someone had a serious addiction to Bath and Bodyworks) it was actually pretty cozy. There were even mattresses and sleeping bags and pillows spread out along the back wall, giving it a teenage sleepover vibe.
    When we were all inside Hayley made a big show of locking the door and pocketing the key, effectively marking herself as the one in charge. If I wasn’t so tired I would have pointed out that a flimsy metal door wasn’t going to be enough to keep a drinker out, lock or no lock, but I didn’t feel like getting into another argument.
    I took a cold shower, borrowed a clean t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts from Rose (I’d left my duffel bag behind in the shopping cart), grabbed a spare sleeping bag and settled down as far away from Hayley and her posse of mean girls as I could get. Flashlights bounced off the tile walls and hushed whispers filled the air as everyone got ready for bed. Wrapping my hair in a towel to dry I unzipped my sleeping bag and crawled inside. Within seconds of closing my eyes my breathing evened out and I was fast asleep.
     
    The dream came suddenly, as dreams sometimes do. One second I was surrounded by complete darkness and the next I was standing outside a dilapidated roller rink. Eighties music echoed from inside and a big billboard announced it was ‘BUY 1 GET 1 NIGHT’ in mismatched letters.
    Whatever that meant.
    Confused, I looked around for something familiar. I was pretty sure the last time I’d gone skating I was seven or eight, and it definitely hadn’t been at this place. I could hear the faint buzz of traffic as it flew by on a nearby interstate, but the roller rink’s parking lot was depressingly empty. Not that I was surprised. The ugly brown building with its half-dead landscaping didn’t exactly scream fun times and entertainment.
    So what the hell was I doing here?
    A minivan with wooden siding (you know the kind) pulled up to the curb and four teenage girls spilled out. They brushed right past me on their way inside, shoving me back against a metal railing badly in need of paint.
    “Watch it,” one of them said.
    “You watch it,” I growled.
    Even in a dream I wasn’t about to take shit from anyone. Especially not a chick wearing pink and black striped leggings, an oversized t-shirt, neon green hoop earrings, and bright blue eyeshadow.
    “We got a problem here?” she asked, snapping her gum as she