Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 43
She reached the door, fought with the knob for a desperate second, and
then stumbled through. “Help me …” Her voice sounded feeble in her
ears, guttural and strangely distant. “Help … me …”
It took a few seconds for her eyes to focus on the contents of the room.
It was a charnel house. Bodies lay scattered about like so much
wastepaper. Men. Women. In chairs; collapsed on the floor; slumped
over desks. Sightless eyes staring into infinity, blood streaming from
noses, ears, and mouths.
Sarah stood in the doorway, her lungs laboring for air, her mind
refusing to take in the reality of what she was seeing. They couldn’t all be
dead. They couldn’t …
Her legs gave way, and she collapsed to her knees. “Somebody … help
…”
A man was lying face up on the carpet, his head a few centimeters from
her left knee. An older man, his lower face a mask of blood and sputum.
In some dark recess of Sarah’s brain, the man’s face connected with a
name. Hammer … smith.
And then Sarah did scream, the sound wrenching itself free from
somewhere deep in her chest, clawing its way up her tortured and swollen
throat like a wild beast rending flesh. She screamed until the last of the air
was gone from her lungs.