Devouring The Dead (Book 2): Nemesis by Russ Watts Page A

pointy nose. He seemed very enthusiastic when he spoke, which Heidi found a little odd under the circumstances. In the van on the way here there had been no time for anything apart from getting to safety as fast as possible.
    Jessica had been standing on the stairway the whole time and something about Heidi irritated her. “Not yet?” said Jessica to Heidi. “When do you think you’re going to go? I don’t think you’ll be going anytime soon. I think you’ve left it a bit late now.”
    He idi missed the sarcastic tone in Jessica’s voice.
    “Oui, Paris is my home , but I do not think that I shall be seeing her again soon,” said Laurent wistfully.
    “Why not ?” asked Heidi glancing over at Tom. He and the other men had stopped talking and were coming over to the sofa. “One day, maybe, when this gets sorted out, they’ll get the trains back up and running. We could go together, all of us. The Eurostar is super-fast, like…”
    “Heidi, how aware are you of what’s going on in the world?” said Jessica leaning forward over the bannister. “Have you been living under a rock? Have you just spent the last three weeks reading ‘Bimbo’ magazine or something?” Jessica stared at her and Heidi felt like she was being scrutinised. She blushed again.
    “Okay, okay,” said Laurent, “let’s remember , Jess, that this is a very unique situation here. If you hadn’t run into me, you wouldn’t know any better either, would you?”
    J essica shrugged and stood up. “I’m tired. See you tomorrow, Laurent.” She trudged off upstairs and Heidi looked at Laurent.
    “I don’t think she likes me.”
    Laurent drew in breath and let it exhale slowly. “Heidi, don’t worry, she is just worried. I’m sure it’s nothing personal. There are lots of things to think about now. With you and your parents joining us our food and water supplies are going to be strained. We don’t have enough beds as it is. And now we have to contend with those monsters outside.”
    Harry sat down beside Laurent . Tom and Jackson plonked themselves down opposite on cushions they had arranged on the floor around the sofa.
    “We haven’t seen them in such large numbers since we left the city,” said Harry. “I’m not sure they’ll be gone before sunrise this time. A few we can handle. They disperse, they thin out, and we can take care of them. But this many? It’s dangerous.”
    “I think we might have to come up with a new plan,” said Tom. “Since we left London we’ve managed, just, but we’re running out of time.”
    “You were in London?” Heidi was amazed. “But...but I had a friend there who said London was destroyed, and that no one got out. She was in Epsom and said the infection basically just swept through London so fast that no one got out. I’m not sure if she got out. I haven’t heard from her since. I suppose there’s no way of knowing, is there? Did you really all come from London?”
    “Yep we sure did,” said Jackson. “We worked together. Well sort of. Tom and Caterina were in the same office as me, Christina and Jessica were in the same building. For a few days, we were trapped there in the city with a lot of our other colleagues. The city was overrun, that’s true, but we managed to escape. None of our other colleagues did. We met Rosa on the way and Harry here we met at the airport. His son, Benzo, was with us, but he didn’t make it either. We lost a lot of good friends, good people, to this thing.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Heidi. “So you got to an airport? How come you didn’t get away, get out of here?”
    “We were too late,” said Tom. “By the time we’d managed to get through the city, England was quarantined. There was no rescue or help waiting for us. We realised we were on our own and had to make our own way out. At that point, we didn’t quite realise how bad this infection had gotten. We figured we would head for France, use the tunnel you know? We couldn’t fly a plane or