Free The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) by Suchitra Chatterjee Page A

She took it, her hand shook, but she managed to take it and put it to her lips. Right then I really wished I smoked.
                  “Lucy,” Phoenix’s voice made me jump because he was suddenly right behind me. His tall angular frame didn’t quite come into the office; he hovered on the border, not entering at first even when I moved so he could. Eventually he entered the office, gingerly, pulling the door behind him, but keeping his hand on the handle.
                  “What’s up?” I said.
                  “A Drone followed Gregory’s car, it filmed what happened.”
    My brain seemed to freeze into a loop of information that I had to process in order to understand what came next. I thought of everything that Gregory had told us, about the attack and how Shannon had been ripped apart and devoured by her boyfriend and his neighbours.
    How he, himself had been attacked, bitten on the neck by Ben, but had managed to escape because his car was nearby and he had left the keys in the ignition.
                  The Drone had filmed it all, and whoever was watching that film had done nothing to help. Nothing at all. A disturbing common factor. Mitch could be right, whoever was really alive outside of those who had ‘woken’ up dead potentially were not a friend to any survivors.
                  “We need to get out of here,” was Seb’s reaction to the news.
                  “And go where?” Mitch said sharply, “If the people from Thorncroft have woken up, what’s the bet others are waking up, Thorncroft is a tiny place…” he didn’t have to say any more than that. We all were blessed with pretty good imaginations.
                  “Did the Drone follow him back here?” I asked Phoenix suddenly.
                  Phoenix nodded his head “It was a long way behind Gregory’s car, but it will get here, if it follows the private road.”
                  “Shit!” Mitch swiftly moved from where he was standing, “I better put Greg’s car in the garage!” He shot out of the office whilst Adag moved swiftly over to the window and pulled down all the blinds.
                  Mitch got the car into the garage quickly enough and was soon back in the office with the rest of us. Seb and I looked at each at each other helplessly, not sure what to do next.
                  “It might not find us,” Seb said, hope in his voice, but it was a forlorn hope. No sooner the words were out of his mouth we all heard it. The whir of a Drone’s blades and the battery powering it. It’s surprising how loud it sounded to our ears, but then the world was now a silent place and subconsciously we had all been straining our ears for anything out of the ordinary.
    It was a low hum at first, continuous and steady, buzzing almost, making me think of bees in summer and then it became a bit like the low level noise you hear of a well-oiled electric lawn mower on a smooth grass turf.
    That sound changed eventually to the familiar sound of the battery powering the Drone’s blades, the sound of a remote controlled helicopter in fact. It eventually got louder, and louder, and I was puzzled as to why it was so loud. It was as if it in the building and not outside of it.
                  “The doors into the dining room are open, we didn’t shut them!” I said with the horrified reality as to why we could hear the blades so well “Oh God, Stevie…”
    I started to move to the door, but Mitch shook his head, blocking my exit, “Stevie’s just asleep,” he whispered, “They will think he hasn’t woken up yet.”
    I didn’t understand what he was saying at first, but Gregory did. He got up from his seat, unsteady, his skin was waxy and wet, he looked so ill, and his neck was leaking through the second layer of toweling.
                  “I’ll stop it,” he said. We all