Ravenous

   I licked my lips nervously. We hadn’t discussed if we were going to attempt the crossing. I knew that Je

   I thought of the other bridge, and then I thought of something else. “What about the military base?” I asked quietly. They all turned to me, frowning as they stared at me in the night. Their eyes were oddly lit by the moonlight filtering through the trees. “I know it’s closed. I know the aliens kicked everyone off of it, but it’s big, and it’s wooded. There are a lot of places to hide there, a lot of buildings we can sneak into. And there might be weapons still there, or maybe even food.”

   They were silent for a long moment as they thought over my words. “I don’t know the base very well,” one man said.

   “The aliens could be out there,” another woman replied. “Wouldn’t it make sense for them to take over that place, and use it as their own?”

   I couldn’t argue with that, it wouldmake sense, but I doubted the aliens were on the base. I didn’t think they would want to take up any sort of permanent residence down here. They hated us; they thought nothing of us, which was very obvious by the fact that they were hunting us like rabid animals and putting us down without hesitation. And now that I had thought about the base, I wasn’t ready to let it go. There could be weapons out there still; there wouldbe places to hide. There may even be places that we could make a stand, places we could defend ourselves from. We couldn’t run forever, we wouldn’t survive long doing that. Our supplies were limited.

   The bridges were a terrifying thought, and one that I did not want to commit to.

   But as much as the base was taking root in my mind, I could tell that they were dead set against it. “We need to get to the mainland,” another man in the group said.

   I sighed softly, Abby’s hand tightened on my arm. There was no reasoning with them, no arguing with them. They had their minds set. I looked toward Aiden, but he wasn’t going to argue, I could see that on his face. He felt the mainland was the best option also. Terror rolled down my spine, they were going to get themselves killed, and they were going to take my friends and family with them.

   I didn’t argue as we fell into step with them. Though it was almost five miles, we arrived at the Bourne bridge far faster than I would have liked. I stared at the impressive metal structure arching gracefully over the canal, it was the twin in many ways to the Sagamore. It was utterly eerie and frightening. I kept waiting for the Twilight Zone music to start playing, kept waiting for somethingto happen. I suddenly felt as if we were the only people left on earth, as if we had been sucked into some strange time loop or perhaps were even being punked. I kept waiting for someone to jump out and yell, ‘Surprise, or Gotcha!’

   Neither of those things happened.

  The lights of the bridge blazed brightly, lighting up the dark night sky. It was hauntingly beautiful, achingly empty. The roadway leading to it was as bright as day to me. It almost seemed as if the lights were trying to entice us forward, trying to lure us onto the soaring structure like a mouse to cheese. I was certain we would be snapped up the minute we stepped out of the shadows of the forest.

   Abby stood on tiptoe, pulling me closer to her. “I don’t want to cross it.”

   I shook my head, pressing my finger against my lips for her to keep quiet. The others gathered together, talking softly amongst themselves. Abby and I stayed back. I didn’t want to separate, it was the lastthing I wanted to do, but I was not going to cross that bridge, and I was not going to let them make Abby cross it either. I didn’t know what we would do if we were left behind, but I was willing to take my chances on this side rather than step onto that death trap.

   I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Cade was shaking his head firmly, his arms crossed over his chest. Abby clung tighter to me; I could feel small tremors ru

   “I need you to stay here Abby.”

   I tried to free myself from her grip, but she only clung tighter to me. “No.”

   “Abby…”

   But it didn’t matter; the group was begi

   “We’re going to go over in groups.”

   “I’m not going over.”

   “Bethany…”

   “No Aiden, I am notcrossing that bridge. It’s suicide to do so.”

   “It’s suicide to stay here.”

   “Crossing that bridge is instantaneoussuicide and you know that. Why would you even want to try it? We still have a chance over here; we can come up with a different plan if we just think about it reasonably.”

   “The aliens might not have considered the bridges.”

   The sheer stupidity of that statement caused my mouth to drop as I gaped at him. They somehow had the technology to navigate galaxies with ease, and freeze a good chunk of the population, but they wouldn’t have the foresight to monitor the only two ways off of Cape Cod? I had no idea what anyone was thinking, but they sure as hell weren’t using their brains to do so. “Aiden…”

   “We can’t stay here Bethany.”

   “There has to be another way.”

   “What way?”

   I didn’t know how to answer that. The canal was known for its dangerous currents, and to swim it would be almost as obvious as ru

   He stared at me for a long moment. “What is it?”

   “We can swim across. If we find some diving gear, we could use it to swim across. We could stay under water, stay out of sight. It could work.”

   He was silent for a moment; Abby stared up at me in wide eyed awe, while Cade seemed to be thinking it over. “None of us know how to use scuba gear, and where would we even get it?”

   I didn’t care if none of us could scuba dive. I was far more willing to take my chances with it than I was with the bridge. “Someone here might know how, and there’s a rental place a few miles away. They have all kinds of beach supplies in there; they may have something that we could use.”

   The other group had moved closer to us, but none of them spoke out when I mentioned scuba diving. “We can figure it out,” I whispered.

   “It’s not something you just figure out Bethany.”

   I glared fiercely at him. “I would rather take my chances with that instead of ru

   “She has a point,” Cade said softly. “We can swim around the canal, avoiding the currents, and come up somewhere more sheltered on the other side.”