[Jason Grimm]

Chapter 3


Water beaded away from the outside of the windshield as Candice clicked on the windshield wipers of her blue Jeep. Lightning lit up the sky as she moved the leather-wrapped wheel in front of her to the left, allowing her to turn onto the drive that led to the police station. She found herself constantly blowing her shoulder-length blonde hair from her face...proof that the workday had officially broken her hairstyle. She was supposed to be picking Sarah up after work for a night of “constructive drinking” in attempts to catch up. She hadn’t seen Sarah or her sister Tahnni in almost a year, which told her that it was definitely time to pay a visit.
“My God, they roll up the sidewalks early around here,” she said to herself as she looked to the severe lack of traffic. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any traffic at all once she got a fair distance from the interstate.
The instant she turned left to enter the parking lot of the station, her face washed from happy to disturbed in the blink of an eye. She could see a barricade up ahead, and what looked like blood all along the pavement and spattered across the police cars as bodies rested motionless on the ground.
“What the fuck?” she mumbled to herself as her foot pressed the brake.
As Candice looked on, she could see one of the officers that rested across a car hood moving slowly. Like it or not, Candice knew that there was a good chance the policeman needed help. Several uneasy curses escaped her pink lips as she placed the Jeep in park and opened her door. She instinctively used her left hand to slide the blue spaghetti-string back into place as the shirt’s straps fought to stay along her arms while the wind carried her thin blue skirt in ripples around her thighs. The closer she got to him, the bloodier and more horrid the scene became. The instant she got close to him, she could see that his waistline was all but severed...yet he still seemed to be awake and aware of what was happening.
“Sir?” Candice asked while dreading the thought of even being a part of whatever was going on. “Let me go inside the station and get some help, ok?”
“No...help,” the man’s voice said softly. “You have to get out of here...or they’ll kill you...”
“Who?” she asked while trying to figure out what was going on.

As she asked the fallen police officer her question, the moaning of an eight-cylinder engine powered into her ears as a police cruiser hurled itself across the parking lot as two men seemed to be attacking the policeman driving. With a scream, Candice ducked as her arms covered her head in anticipation of the car crashing near her. Her eyes refused to look, but her ears felt the crunching of metal and plastic as the police car crashed hard into the driver’s side of her Jeep, pinning it between a streetlight and the car that had hit it.
The instant she lifted her head, she immediately looked away from the broken and mangled bodies that were thrown from the police cruiser’s windshield and mashed against the side of her vehicle. She looked back to the officer that she had went to help to begin with to find that he was no longer breathing. Once she took a moment to look around, she noticed people walking slowly around the barricade only a portion of yards from her; people that were lying on the ground motionless moments before. Before she even had a chance to say a single word, her eyes quickly told her that these people were mangled and in no fashion still capable of being alive. A stiff gasp escaped her as the mob noticed her presence and began to smell the air in her direction. The second fear began to slide it’s cold tongue down her back, she turned and hurled herself to the station entrance as fast as her legs would carry her while her heartbeat raced faster and faster. She had no doubt that if she stayed outside that something would kill her. The mere thought of going inside the police station made her stomach sink, but there was just nowhere else to go that she imagined she could make it to on foot that even stood a chance of being safe.
With that thought in her mind, Candice slowly and fearfully opened one of the glass doors and entered the station...




Ok everybody, there's the preview. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm sorry that it wouldn't all fit into one post, but hopefully splitting it up doesn't make it too difficult to read.
I'm already several chapters into the second book in the series, plus I'm also working on a stand-alone survival horror as well. I hope to have both of those out sometime next year. With projected storylines and notes I have at the moment; the "Reaper Effect" series will most likely end with book five, so maybe that will make the most of my seven-year contract. I have plenty of work coming up and I hope some of you join me for the ride.

Thanks for reading everybody!