Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough

From the Publisher

Life was good for Matt and Chloe. They were in love and looking forward to their new baby. But what Chloe gave birth to isn’t a baby. It isn’t even human. It’s an entirely new species that uses humans only for food—and as hosts for their young.

As Matt soon learns, though, he is not alone in his terror. Women all over town have begun to give birth to these hideous creatures, spidery nightmares that live to kill—and feed. As the infestation spreads and the countryside is reduced to a series of web-shrouded ghost towns, will the survivors find a way to fight back? Or is it only a matter of time before all of mankind is reduced to a…Breeding Ground

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Breeding Ground

Dorchester Publishing

All right reserved.

ISBN: 0-8439-5741-7

Chapter One

Staring at the blood and intestines that hung from beneath the
hem of her wide skirt, my head filled with the image of my
poor dead baby on our kitchen floor, and Chloe's haunting
words.

I think there's something else growing inside me. A new kind
of baby.

Jesus Christ. Were they all carrying something inside them? Is
that what had killed this woman? Giving birth to something?
Resisting the urge to turn and run I stared at her, needing
more time to believe the horror of what I was seeing.

She too glistened with the light threads that covered her
dazed children and most of the room, but in her case strands
of it had erupted from within her, escaping through her
nostrils, ears and mouth and wrapping round her body, even the
corners of her eyes leaked it. Her dead body was cocooned, but
done so from the inside. Had it been her last unnatural act,
or had it happened post-mortem?

The rasping moan pulled my attention back to the man who'd
summoned me up here, his bloodshot eyes meeting mine and
reflecting my own terror, urging me to step across the
threshold into his nightmare world. His jaw worked silently
before he finally got the words out, his body pushed forward
on the edge of the sofa in an almost impossible position. How
could he stay like that? Why didn't he fall off the side?

'Help me ...'

I was about to move forward, God help me I was, when from
behind him, from where slick sucking sounds drifted towards
me, one milky, transluscent leg, thin and sharply jointed,
came over his side, wrapping round him like a lover, and I
froze. I stared at the shiny footless limb in disgust, as
another crept over the man, and then another until four held
his limp body in place, one at his shoulders, then his waist,
his knees and his feet. What the fuck was it? Jesus Christ,
just what the fuck was it? And what the fuck was it doing to
him?

Looking over his shoulder, I could make out the smooth curved
edges of the creature's body pulsing behind him, completely
inhuman, like some awful pale insect, huge and mutated.

'Help me ... pleeasse'

The desperate, dying man croaked out the words, a dribble of
blood escaping from his thin anguished lips, and I couldn't
imagine his agony. I couldn't see past my own fear, as the
legs contracted tighter around him, pulling the prey closer,
and the awful round body rose up slightly as if to investigate
the distraction, its milky white surface shining like mother
of pearl, as for a moment the sucking stopped.

'Pleaasee ...'

I moaned as I felt it look at me, really look at me, over his
body from its bank of almost invisible eyes, their raised bump
surfaces glistening in the same sickly colour as the rest of
its body, each standing out only by the pinpoint of bright red
at its centre. I knew in that moment as it locked me in its
gaze that it was feeding on him, feeding on him while he was
still alive, and the primeval fear at the core of me told me
that this terrible huge spider thing was enjoying his pain.
That it understood what it was doing.

I think there's something else growing inside me. A new kind
of baby.

I remembered how Chloe had been when I'd left her, her body
jolting and jerking on the sofa, something moving under her
clothes, something pushing its way out of her, and staring at
this monster in front of me, I let the scream that had been
welling up inside of me out, let it rip free, and it released
my own frozen limbs.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Breeding Ground
by Sarah Pinborough
Copyright © 2006 by Sarah Pinborough .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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